Present: Mary Lou Roberts, Andrea Cannon, Seth Himmelhoch, Mychal Gendron, Frank Longay, David Madsen, Joe Pecoraro

SAA Conference Video Updates

Dave reports that the video is not done yet, we are also waiting for the SAA office to send him some transcripts of the interviews. Dave can send us material from the video for us to screen. He has seen footage taken so far and it’s good.

Recording of Books 8-9: Progress Report

All the recording and editing is done but there are still a few details to deal with. Both William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant are involved in the project. Frank states he will lobby hard to get the CD project through and get it released soon.

RH fingerings ideas from Harald Soderberg

Harald Soderberg from Europe has written to Mary Lou and he wants to know what the view of the SAA committee is concerning the printed right hand fingerings. Should we expect complete fidelity to printed fingerings? What is our sense of the need to follow them exactly? How does this fit into the ESA teacher exams where they have to teach in front of a panel?

Seth says there are two sides to the issue: Are the fingerings good in themselves? And how much do teachers need to adhere to book? Mychal asks do we want the fingerings to express principles of pedagogy, or do we want teachers to just follow directions? Seth mentions the pamphlet Frank hands out at Teacher Training workshops which contains the updated right hand fingerings for Book 1. Frank says the purpose of the new fingerings is to help the kids have good habits of fingering and further he says the way he does it, the advanced kids do indeed have great habits. Mary Lou says ESA is really just looking for a way to compare standards with us as a help in setting up their teacher training process. Frank will write up a response to Harald and send it to us for our suggestions before sending it on to Harald.

Audition Requirements for Teacher Trainee Candidates

This discussion concerned several difficulties that arose recently in training situations. It seems that unqualified candidates are arriving at teacher training workshops with the trainer having to deal one or more of the following situations: trainees enrolled who were not classical guitarists, or who have very limited training on the guitar, trainees not playing rest stroke, and some who had never used nails. Several highly qualified trainees stated that they thought the Suzuki training should be at a higher level of classical guitar technique. The Committee discussed several ways to let prospective trainees know more of the expectations involved with taking training. We will follow up this topic in the next Conference Call.