Études for Solo Guitar
The subject of creating an educational aid for guitar students of an intermediate level that will serve also as a similar aid for theory and composition students fascinates me and motivates my compositional thought for quite a while. The objective was to create miniature complete works for the guitar, as J. S. Bach did with his fifteen inventions, in the ?manner? of an Étude that deals with specific aspects of guitar techniques and musicianship in general.


These Études are gradually graded based on their difficulty and style. They cover all the positions of the guitar and explore known and some unfamiliar techniques for the contemporary guitarist.
I used a compositional language more familiar for the level of the intermediate guitarist but without sacrificing my original compositional voice so these pieces could be used as concert works by the advanced musicians as well. My intention is to educate students in a multilevel study environment and to be able to promote the music of our time. During my teaching years I found that students become better musicians when they have been taught to adapt certain performance difficulties and compositional techniques at an earlier level of their training.
Titles:

1 with false optimism

2 with moderate sadness

3 with just the two of you

4 with a touch of impatience

5 with a touch of grandeur

6 with a counterpoint attitude

7 with a touch of shame

8 with a touch of boredom

9 going and never coming back

10 with a peaceful anger

11 without the heavy ones

12 without hope

13 without sense of humor

14 with a masculine attitude

15 with two little bears in mind

16 without hesitation

17 with shameless vibrato

18 with a touch of distress

19 without fear of failure

20 with this and that

21 with a kind motion

22 with a rondo attitude

23 with suspense

24 with everything you may have

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.

Level 1: Notation for guitar. Easy to play along with and see the words of the song as you play!

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.