ISBN 9781619118171.

Classically trained jazz guitarist Diego Barber presents five well-developed themes and a 3-movement solo sonata transcribed from his outstanding commercial CD recordings: Calima, One Minute Later, Tales, and The Choice. Two of the tracks, aElvira Mariaa and the 3-movement Sonata aBanc daArguina are strictly guitar solos, while aRichia is a solo accompanied by light percussion. aKilianas Mountaina is a reduced score of an extended duet with a pianist, and aDesiertoa and aVirgiannaa include expert sidemen on saxophone, bass and drums. The music ventures from complex melody-chord textures to hard-swinging grooves, all played with spontaneity and a heightened awareness of time, dynamics, color, technique and tone. Even seasoned guitarists will find these pieces rhythmically and technically challenging, but they provide a roadmap to the recordings, and rare insight to the workings of a unique musical mind. Diego Barberas Compositions for Classical Guitar are written in standard notation only, with online access to stellar solo and ensemble recordings. About Sonata aBanc daArguina a\| Diego Barber is a native of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, just off the northeast coast of Africa; in writing Sonata aBanc daArguin,a the main solo piece in this collection, he was inspired by the major cities, Nouadhibou and Nouakchott, the Banc daArguin National Park, and the desert of the West African country of Mauritania.

Song List: Aura Lee Beautiful Dreamer Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair Black Sunday Darling Nellie Gray Hard Times, Come Again No More I Dream of Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair In The Pines Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier Just A-Wearyn' for You Just Before The Battle, Mother Land of Rest Lorena Mighty Lak' A Rose Paper Of Pins Prairie Sunset Pretty Peggy û O Shady Grove Shenandoah The Lonesome Dove The Long Road The Old Country The Old Homestead TO a Wild Rose Trail Of Tears

This collection contains sixty easy Renaissance pieces from various European countries, and from works of well known, but also obscure or anonymous composers, transcribed for the classical guitar mainly from lute, vihuela, and bandore sources. The pieces will be published in three volumes, each volume containing twenty pieces.
I have tried to include pieces of varied difficulty in all three volumes and also to keep the upper level of technical difficulty to the contemporary grade IV level of the A.B.R.S.M. which takes the student to the intermediate level (grades IV-VI).
The pieces in each volume are given in two versions, first as decorated pages in ordinary notation, and then the same pieces are again given in undecorated pages of notation and tablature. Therefore each volume contains two books in one and the choice is left to the user whether to keep the volume as presented, or to construct his own book by inclusion or deletion of unwanted pages, blank pages, etc, for use either as a printed or a tablet-screen book version. The addition of tablature of course results in doubling the number of pages needed for the presentation of the pieces, therefore the staff sizes are here reduced to an appropriate degree which can maintain the two-page view principle of any piece without need for automatic or manual page turners, foot pedals etc.
The inclusion of tablatures which shows a preference for open string combinations whenever that is possible, clarifies sufficiently the left hand playing positions without need for additional fingerings.
Having said that, my professional advice to all guitar students is to abandon completely their reliance on tablatures and study seriously through many easy collections of music such as the present one in order to familiarise themselves to all aspects of musical notation. And always have in mind that tablatures were invented and still are in use only for fretted instruments, and only due to commercial (publisher?s) considerations primarily, while other string instrumentalists neither have them available, nor need them in order to study/play music.

Metronome marks are only suggestions that need not be taken too literally and are placed mainly for guiding a score writer programme such as Sibelius for performance and extraction of audio and video files. To this end many other expression and/or technique and tempo marks may have been added to the score and made invisible.

NAVIGATION INDEXES ? External and Internal links

The second page in every volume is an index divided into three columns. The first column has the titles of the pieces as active invisible links which take the user to the relevant tablature page. The header of that page brings the user back to this index.
The second column has visible links (in frames) to live performances of the pieces either by professional guitarists or students, which are only for getting familiar with the music, but not as suggestions that particular performances should be followed for study purposes.
The third column contains active links to information about particular composers, found mainly in Wikipedia, but sometimes also in other external sources.
The third page in every volume contains a thematic index of active links to the decorated (without tablatures) pages of the pieces. The header of every decorated page brings the user back to this index.
Finally, the titles of all decorated and tablature pages are active links of interconnection between these pages.

This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard?s global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.

ISBN 9781610656566. Eleven original compositions for the classical guitar composed in the eclectic style for which Frederic Hand has become well known. Written in standard notation only, some of these pieces allow for optional improvisatory sections (About Time and Missing Her). The composer performs all of the compositions on an accompanying recording. Some pieces require retuning the sixth string to low D. The level of difficulty ranges from easy to difficult, with the majority of the material falling at the intermediate level. Program notes are included for each piece. The audio download available online presents performances of all the pieces by the composer.

Ernesto García de León's 20 Studies, Op. 50 is an ingenious collection thataddresses fundamental questions about how to develop and maintain guitar technique. It is designed toserve guitar teachers and students as well as performers and concert audiences. Since it explores notjust the technique of our instrument, but its musicaland expressive aspects as well, it makes daily technical work enjoyable, not tedious?even for someone only beginning to study the guitar.

For guitar teachers and students, 20 Studies canserve as a basic curriculum or it can complementother methods or other sets of studies. For performers, it provides a complete overview and tune-up ofthe guitar technique in one graded set of daily studies that can be played in less than half an hour. Thiswarm-up then provides the player delicious concertrepertoire?as the complete set, or in smaller groups,or in combinations with other music by ErnestoGarcía de León.

These musical exercises are also useful to rectify,reform or rehabilitate the guitar technique.

The materials out of which the twenty studies aredeveloped are first idiomatic patterns of the guitarand then the variety of musical styles so appealing toand characteristic of Ernesto García de León. For example, classic examples of the music of theCaribbean coastal basin in general and thecomposer's native state Veracruz in particular appearunvarnished in #12 (a rumba veracruzana) and #20(a son). The other studies blend elements of Mexicanmusic in general?songs of the revolution, nativedances, boleros, children's songs, and so forth?withelements of European classical music, Beatles, NewAge music, jazz and other musical styles, in a wayintended to appeal to the player and to the listener.

As the summary on pages 34 and 35 illustrates,the first sixteen studies explore basic formulas for theright hand. At the same time, they also address thefull range of left hand techniques?including balanceand positioning, independence of the fingers, longitudinal and transversal movements, shifts by substitution, by displacement, by jump, and by positions,barring, stretches and contractions, damping, pivoting, crossed movements, and movements with fixedfingers. The last four studies concern the slur.

Though each of the basic right- and left-hand formulas explored in the twenty studies is relativelysimple in itself, each is a building block of a solidtechnique. Mastery of the complete set of twentystudies?less than half an hour of music?integratesall the formulas and develops the technique to a levelat which an enormous range of the guitar repertoirebecomes available.