03.08.07 kulturnatib

Menuet in G

Menuet in G by Johann Sebastian Bach is probably the most recognizable tune in the canons of western music. Any musician or any person aspiring to be a musician will more than recognize this tune. They will have this tune under their belt to be whipped out for their amusement, for warm up before they get into more serious playing or to impress others with their pedigree in music.

I know; been there, done that. Yet, now, some two decades after learning to play the guitar and having some rudimentary lessons in classical guitar plus an aborted detour through music conservatory, I am revisiting this tune. Not that I ever really visited this tune before. At least not the tune that Bach originally wrote.

Still, in the way that we Pinoys are known for worldwide, for picking up a tune on the fly, as it were, learning it by ear, then playing a passable version, or even mangling it often beyond recognition; I am able to play a reasonable facsimile of this tune.

I don't remember how I learned it. Most likely it was with the oido method, or really just listening and remembering the tune then playing it back note by note as far as how they are remembered. Or, it is also entirely possible that I saw somebody play it and tried to mimic the playing from there.

In any case, what I learned is unmistakably the Menuet in G.

But then, since my goal for taking up the classical guitar once again, and this time more seriously, is learning to sight read notes, I thought why not go back to the original and learn to play it the way Bach wrote it?

Here, as with many things nowadays; thank God for the internet. I was able to find, through the MutopiaProject (www.mutopiaproject.org), the original sheet music for the guitar – tablature -- of this tune. This and many others can be downloaded, distributed, shared, modified and performed absolutely free of charge from this site through an increasingly popular copyright protocol known as the Creative Commons.

This, by the way, has developed almost hand in hand with the growing popularity of the open source software movement that is now beginning to make serious inroads into the monopolistic stranglehold of a few software giants, like Microsoft and even in industries like pharmaceuticals.

But, back to music; the first thing I noticed as soon as I had printed the two-page file I had downloaded was that I had the spelling of the title to this tune all wrong, all along. Typical of Pinoys who are forever confusing or interchanging the soft and hard vowels, I always spelled it with an i: Minuet.

After that aha moment, I sat down to play. But before that I tried to read the notes aloud. Remember this was tablature sheet music I had downloaded, which has the additional advantage of having, along with the notes, the fingering and fret positioning. With this, one doesn't really have to read notes, but only to follow the fingering written as numbers where the note heads would be.

Still, I considered this not as an advantage but a possible hazard since my goal for getting back to the original source for this tune, in particular, and in retaking up classical guitar, in general, is to learn to sight read guitar music and by extension all music in general. Tablature then can become a crutch when the real way to walk is to stride steady, confident and unassisted.

Reading out the notes, I saw where the version I learned had added a note here, an inflection there, a rest here and a missing note there.

Playing it was another thing. Habit, embedded in muscle memory, was a difficult if benign monster to control. The way I habitually played this piece was on a head-on collision course with what I was supposed to play in the music sheet in front of me. It was slow going at first and, truth to tell, I had to lean on the crutch of the tablature to move on through some knotty passages.

Struggling through, I remembered what a former teacher, the late Tinong Abellana told us who were considered the campus radicals back then. He said, the only way to successfully break the rules is to first master the rules.

I am still pretty much a rule breaker. But with the guitar, with the Menuet in G, rule mastery is key.