Peacock plays guitar

Soft sunlight filters into the cafeteria in Sir James Dunn Hall on St. Thomas University’s campus, glinting off the polished wood of Stephen Peacock’s guitar.

It’s a little rounder and the fret-board is over further than the usual acoustic guitars you see young, long haired students toting around with them. Peacock is a classical guitar player.

Peacock demonstrates different strokes on his guitar.

“You can play different articulations,” Peacock says about playing classical. “You can do rest strokes, and free strokes, and scraping strokes, and strumming strokes. There are lots of ways of getting the strings to vibrate.”

Classical guitar is played like a piano, allowing for baselines, melodies, and chords to be played at the same time. The right-hand technique allows Peacock and other classical players to create many different voices on what is typically a single-voiced instrument. Voices are the different sounds the guitar is able to create, whether it’s a baseline, a melody, a chord, or harmonic.

Acoustic players are limited in the sounds and number of voices they’re able to play. Most often they’re using free strokes or playing with a flat pick all the time.

“Nothing’s wrong with using a pick. It’s a great way to play guitar,” he says. “But you’re limited to only playing either single strings or adjacent strings. You couldn’t pick out the sixth string and the fourth string and the first string at the same time with a flat pick, but you can easily do that with the right hand.”

The right-hand technique Peacock describes allows for the guitar player to use different fingers to pick different strings at the same time. The sound a classical guitar makes has a level of complexity and variety to it, he says, created by this technique.

A clip of Peacock playing in Sir James Dunn.  

Click play to listen.

“When I first started playing guitar, I was just bashing around on an acoustic guitar,” he says.

He was 13-years-old when he first started bashing on that acoustic guitar, and was about 15 when he started playing classically. It was a cousin who played a little bit of classical guitar that first introduced him to the technique.

“I thought that was interesting, and I liked the sound of classical.”

Peacock demonstrating different finger articulations.

Peacock studied privately and attended workshops, but never went to school for performance. He does have a masters degree in music education and teaches guitar at St. Thomas University. Peacock learned mainly by performing with others and by taking master classes in guitar.

“Most of the people I perform with have masters in performance degrees in their instruments,” he says. “I can’t claim to have that, but I like to think I can work with people of that level.”

Outside of teaching, Peacock’s also the music director of the Wilmot United Church in downtown Fredericton. He plays around 30 concerts every year, alone and in collaboration with other performers.

Peacock recently performed with Sally Wright, an orchestral flute player and part of Duo Cantilena with Peacock. The two arrange and write pieces for the group. The concert, held at Wilmot Church on November 21, raised funds for the Benevolent Fund.

“It’s a downtown church and a lot of people, they’re just completely out of money,” he says. “They come by for food vouchers and that sort of thing, so it’s that kind of community support that we’re raising money for.”

Peacock says he enjoys working with other instruments like the flute. They’re two instruments with different sounds. The flute is slow, soft, and sustained, while the guitar is quick and more pronounced in its sound.

Peacock playing a small riff in Sir James Dunn Hall.

“I think of the guitar as like chocolate,” he says. “Is it bitter? Is it sweet? Is it speaking quickly or slowly? Is it sustained or pizzicato? Well, it’s all those things so I’ll just have some more chocolate.”

His fingernails are long and the edges smooth. While he plays, he uses them like little picks attached to the tips of his fingers as his fingers move deftly across the strings.

“There should be a different word, like exotic music or artistic fabulous music,” he says laughing. “We need a better term than serious music, or art music, or classical music. Who wants to go there?”

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Posted by Chelsea Stevens on Nov 30, 2009. Filed under Features, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.