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Classical Guitars And Pickups

Ricky — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:40:18 +0000

If you want to play nylon string acoustic guitar then put learning to play the guitar first and put amplification on the back burner. The classical guitar is fairly demanding so you would do well to put the time and effort into executing your pull-offs and hammer-ons and getting your picking – finger or flatpick – working before you add a pickup into the mix.

You could buy an acoustic/electric guitar if you are really set on playing loud. And the acoustic/electric is usually cut away so you can get to the high frets. The nylon string acoustic has its own special sound which is not improved by the addition of a pickup. If you have a decent classical, use a microphone to be heard above room noise.

Here is a comprehensive video on amplifying a nylon string acoustic guitar:

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How To Play Greensleeves On The Guitar

Ricky — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:33:10 +0000

Greensleeves is a melody that is recognized by practically everybody and is very easy to play. This makes it ideal for a beginner or intermediate guitarist to learn so they can add a classical guitar style piece to their repertoire. If you do not want to learn to play fingerstyle you can still play the piece as guitar solo by strumming the chords and picking out bass notes and melody as you see fit.

Apparently the story that Greensleeves was composed by Henry VIII is no more than a myth but that does not take away from the beauty of the tune. The song has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Odetta, John Coltrane, Mason Williams, Jeff Beck and Leonard Cohen to name a few. If you want to learn the words, here they are:

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company.

CHORUS:
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

I have been ready at your hand
To grant whatever thou would’st crave;
I have waged both life and land
Your love and goodwill for to have.

CHORUS

Thy petticoat of sendle white
With gold embroidered gorgeously;
Thy petticoat of silk and white
And these I bought thee gladly.

CHORUS

Here is a link to guitar tab for Greensleeves.

This video shows how Greensleeves sounds and you can get the tablature for this arrangement of Greensleeves here.

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Classical Guitar Music – The Anonymous Romance

Ricky — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:18:33 +0000

The Anonymous Romance is a piece of music that gets under people’s skins. It’s one of those pieces that when you hear it the first time, you feel like you could listen to it over and over. The work has an interesting history in that there are many classical guitar enthusiasts who have a strong opinion on who wrote it. It has been known for many years in Brazil as Romance de Amor, by Antonio Rovira. Some people believe it was composed by Francisco Tarrega, a pioneer classical guitar player and composer. Other people think it was written by Narcisco Yepes a famous classical guitarist of the twentieth century. Yepes arranged and played Anonymous Romance for the 1952 movie Jeux Interdit, (Forbidden Games). Although the movie credits don’t actually say he wrote it, Yepes’ widow is among many who think he did. This is in spite of the fact that the same piece was used ten years before in the Tyrone Power movie, Blood And Sand.

Whoever wrote it, it is Yepes’ arrangement that is usually played, so here he is playing it on his famous ten-string classical guitar:

You can find an accurate free tab for Anonymous Romance at Tab Guitar Lessons

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Classical And Flamenco Guitars

Ricky — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:53:56 +0000

This is a little question that I see popping up around the internet, so I thought we could look at what these guitars are for and how they differ from each other. The flamenco and classical guitars are made from two distinct types of wood to give their respective musics their individual sounds. The flamenco guitar, until the nineteen seventies, had a thin, biting sound which was vastly different from the deep sound of the classical guitar. As the new wave of flamenco guitarists like Serranito and Paco De Lucia experimented with new ideas in flamenco, they also chose to modify the harsh flamenco sound, so today’s flamenco guitar has a deeper sound than one made in the fifties or sixties.

Here is Vicente Amigo playing a modern flameno guitar showing off the advance state of vituosity of twenty-first century flamenco guitar playing:

The flamenco guitar is made to accompany flamenco singers and dancers. Even though there are now many solo guitarists whose music is based in flamenco, your average guitar player will find the action too low and the sound too thin for playing other kinds of music.

The classical guitar has a more resonant sound. These guitars have been made expressly for playing classical music with the classical guitar player’s technique in mind. Even though the sound of the classical guitar is ideal for solos, many acoustic guitar players from other genres prefer the sound of the steel string acoustic.

Here is David Russell playing Fantasia by Alonso Mudarra, modern-sounding piece composed in the sixteenth century:

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An Easy Acoustic Guitar Solo – Packington’s Pound

Ricky — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:31:42 +0000

Packington’s Pound is a very old traditional melody dating back to the fifteen hundreds. It is a dance tune so once you become familiar with it, let it swing. The technical requirements are minimal so if you are a beginner fingerstyle guitarist you should give it a try to add some zing to your repertoire at modest outlay.

Here is a link to Packington’s Pound tabs

And here is a feisty performance of Packington’s Pound so you can see how it should be played:

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Easy Classical Guitar Songs And Pieces

Ricky — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:10:08 +0000

Classical guitar is an interesting instrument to learn. The process of graduating from struggling to get your right hand fingers coordinated for playing bass, melody and accompaniment together will keep you enjoying your guitar practice for a long time. Not that it takes that long before you are playing easy classical guitar songs.

In centuries past, what we identify as classical was the only guitar style that existed. Whether it was accompanying songs or playing instrumentals, the music that was the product of strumming and plucking the guitar strings inspired composers to write easy songs and pieces that could be played on classical guitar.

You don’t need to confine yourself to classical guitar songs and pieces in your repertoire, there are many arrangements of modern tunes for classical guitar. Apart from the classical guitar versions of songs by The Beatles which have been around for many years, classical guitarists have posted on YouTube videos of their arrangements of songs like Stairway To Heaven for classical guitar. The videos often provide a link to the tab for the tune so you don’t have to learn it by ear.

One of the most popular easy classical guitar songs is Blackbird by The Beatles. Everybody loves to play it and audiences love to listen to it. But there are easy songs and tunes from all ages that you can play after a few months of learning classical guitar. You can even find anthologies of easy classical guitar pieces such as 50 Easy Classical Guitar Solos by Jerry Willard. This book contains pieces from all periods of musical history written in standard musical notation and in tab form.

There are also collections of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach like Sarabande No. 1 and Musette in D Major that are surprisingly easy for beginners to play. Also there are well known anonymous pieces like Packington’s Pound, Nonesuch, Kemp’s Jig.

The best thing about learning easy classical guitar songs is that many are beginner-friendly pieces that will yield great satisfaction without being difficult to play.

Here is a video from Swedish guitarist, Per-Olov Kindgren playing Stairway To Heaven. This is not what I would call an easy arrangement but I couldn’t resist it.

Who’s the best classical guitarist?

Ricky — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:04:25 +0000

The classical guitar is looked on by fans of other styles of guitar playing as technically advanced but a little starchy. Of course, to use the guitar to faithfully interpret works written for the piano or violin does need a formidable technique. Most classical guitarist students would be looking ahead a year or two to the time they could call themselves fully fledged guitarists.

The pioneer of classical guitar is Andres Segovia. His first guitar tuition was rooted in the tradition of flamenco even though he was never really interested in flamenco as material for his guitar playing. His interest in the contemporary music of Spain and in the works of J. S. Bach helped shape the repertoire of the classical guitarists who followed in his footsteps.

John Williams was a student of Segovia’s who became known to a wider musical audience through his recording of Stanley Myers’ Cavatina which became known as the theme of the movie, The Deerhunter, and his work with the band, Sky. If these populist projects had not happened John Williams would still be one of the best classical guitarists because of his flawless technique and confident approach to the guitar. Always on the lookout for new musical territory, John Williams has recorded many duets with Julian Bream and flamenco guitarist, Paco Pena.

Many classical guitar enthusiasts regard Julian Bream as the best classical guitarist. Although his playing is accompanied by tortured facial expressions, the sound he makes has a profound effect on all audiences. Julian Bream has recorded just about all there is to record in the classical guitar repertoire and is also a great lute player.

No list of contenders for the title of best classical guitarist should leave out Narcisco Yepes. Although many critics found some of his interpretations cold or mechanical, nobody could deny that when he was good, he was very, very good. At the age of twenty-one, Narcisco Yepes recording of Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo was responsible for turning the unknown piece for guitar and orchestra into a popular composition. This was in spite of the fact that Yepes had only a sketchy understanding of musical notation. According to some authorities, Narcisco Yepes was also the composer of The Anonymous Romance, one of the most popular solo guitar pieces ever. This remarkable guitarist also collaborated with Jose Ramirez, the famous luthier, to produce a ten string classical guitar which he first used in a concert in the mid nineteen sixties.

Here is a video of John Williams and Paco Pena playing a duet based on a Farruca first recorded by Sabicas, a flamenco guitarist who was also a pioneer of multi-track recording:

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On learning to play classical guitar

Ricky — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:26:03 +0000

Further to the previous post on learning the guitar using sheet music or tab, here is a video of John Williams, the British classical guitarist, playing “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz. This video is a great illustration of how artists and musicians who rely on musical elements other than pure self-expression put themselves in a position where they have to train their bodies for years in order to play certain kinds or music. If you want to play rock and roll, you can be a working guitar player in a year’s time if you work hard, but if you want to play classical music on the guitar, you need to lift your level of technique by degrees over a number of years. Even if you learn music from tabs.

If you are interested in learning to play classical guitar, there’s a post at classicalguitarblog.net on finding a guitar teacher

Beatles For Classical Guitar

Ricky — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:30:58 +0000

One of the big events in fingerstyle guitar playing many years ago was the publication of a music book called “Beatles For Classical Guitar“. This was the world’s first attempt to mix the simplicity of the Beatles’ tunes with the complexity of classical guitar technique.

One of the first things that fingerpicking guitar players who were not trained in classical guitar playing noticed was that the fingerings to some of the tunes were much more difficult to execute than they had been used to. But no pain, no gain. The trickier arrangements indicated how much more musical richness had been found in these more complicated arrangements of familiar songs.

Some guitar players thought that a book of classical style acoustic guitar arrangements of the work of The Beatles was just a gimmick. They expected that a minimal amount of work went into these arrangements just to produce popular music for the “egghead market”. In fact the songs are all substantial arrangements that many classical guitarists find extremely satisfying to play.

People who loved the Beatles’ music found that the songs had not been rendered unrecognizable in the process of arranging them for fingerpicking. The songs were arranged for guitar players who could read standard musical notation and they were not the kind of arrangements that could be played right through on sight the first time you saw them. The pieces asked you to pay some attention and make some effort. Once you get the feel of the way the songs have been interpreted you can let your familiarity with the songs guide you as you play.

Some guitar players are going to feel cheated by the fact that there are not tabs but the pieces are a bit too complicated to be translated into tab effectively. Guitarists who are used to playing using sheet music will be gratified that the music is not made more complicated by the addition of a tab line.

Here is the list of songs:

Across The Universe
Ask Me Why
Come Together
Cry Baby Cry
Day Tripper
For No One
From Me To You
Hello, Goodbye
Here Comes The Sun
I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
I Will
I’ll Follow The Sun
I’m A Loser
I’m Happy Just To Dance With You
I’m Only Sleeping
I’m So Tired
In My Life
The Long And Winding Road
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
No Reply
Nowhere Man
P.S. I Love You
Penny Lane
Something
Things We Said Today
This Boy (Ringo’s Theme)
Two Of Us
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Yesterday
You’re Going To Lose That Girl

You might be surprised by the inclusion of some of the tunes in a collection of guitar solos. So go ahead and try them out.

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Classical Guitar Technique – Scale Picking

Ricky — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:30:45 +0000

At first classical guitar seems impossibly complex and technically difficult but the truth is the advanced guitar techniques classical guitar players use are just as easy to learn as any other technique. Once you have practiced them slowly and carefully, they become easy and you are able to perform them without even thinking about it.

One of the first things a classical guitar player must do is get the fingers of his right hand working independently. The way to do this, apart from just learning a lot of pieces, is to work out some picking patterns that will involve your right hand fingers getting used to moving from string to string with ease.

Start with the major scale in the first position. Start with the open sixth string picked with the first finger of the right hand and the F played with the second finger, and alternate like that till you get to the open first string. That’s the basic way to play scales using your fingers. A classical guitarist would usually do this using the “rest stroke” where, if you are picking the fifth string the finger would come to rest against the sixth string instead of curling up toward the palm.

You should vary the way you play the scales by starting each string with a different finger. For instance you could begin picking the sixth string with the first finger, the fifth with the second, the fourth with the first again and so on, then for the next scale you start the notes on the sixth string with the second finger, the fifth with first, and so on.

Once you have started to practice playing scales and exercises you will become aware of the way your hands are working and of the fact that the fingers have their own habits and comfort zones. When you notice the ways your fingers want to play, you make up a scale exercise that involves going against the inclinations of your fingers. Getting the right hand fingers to work independently will give you a freedom that other guitar players don’t have. Travis picking, for example, will not give the fingers the independence that playing scales will.

The idea of using the habits your hands and fingers have gotten into to help you progress as a classical guitarist is a basic principal you can use in any facet of your guitar playing. A habit is not a brick wall that you must live with, it is the first step in the next stage of your technical progress on the guitar.

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