ISBN 9781619117549.

The arts flourished in the Baroque period. Music from that time is still performed worldwide by symphonies, opera companies, choirs, chamber ensembles and soloists on many instruments. The period was characterized by the works of such great artists as J. S. Bach (b. 1685), Handel (b. 1685), Telemann (b. 1681) and many others. These composers defined the rich, ornate and melodic Baroque style of music which we categorize in the classical realm. There was another genre of music flourishing during this period, and that was the common or folk music style characterized by such composers as Ireland's legendary harpist, Turlough O'Carolan (b. 1670).In composing music for this book the author recreated harmonic and melodic elements of this great musical age, while adding some contemporary twists. All of the etudes are original and will serve to enhance guitar technique, phrasing, expression, note- reading ability, and knowledge of the entire guitar fingerboard. Fingering and string markings are included where appropriate.In addition to facilitating the many technical and aesthetic aspects of performing at an advanced level on the guitar, these etudes may be used successfully in concerts or recitals. This book is an ideal companion for the other books in the Mel Bay Achieving Guitar Artistry series, which is designed to condition and guide the developing guitarist to an advanced level of proficiency, regardless of the style of music performed.

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.