Hiho! This is the "Toccata" J.S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It is one of Bach's early works and probably one of his most popular pieces. It was originally an organ piece, but I transcribed it for guitar. It can be played with one guitar, but for the better sound I played the chords with up to 6 guitars, because with heavy distortion some of the chords don't sound too good. It involves tapping, lots of legato stuff and arpeggios. I also transcribed the "Fugue" section. You can find it

Greets! This is the first of a (hopefully) long series of John Dowland pieces. This one is called "Complaint". John Dowland's compositions were mainly Lute-based - the Tuning for the Guitar would be EADF#BE, but I transcribed it for standard guitar-tuning so that you do not have to retune your guitar. Being a quite simple piece this one is good for you to work on feel and interpretation. It has also a few tricky chords in it - so work them out slowly. Have fun and see you on the next Dowland lesson.

Hi folks! Here is the second part of J.S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" - the Fugue section. Fugues are normally longer than the toccata and in this particular case much more difficult. The weak sound quality is a result of the high mp3 compression I had to use to get this 3 minute piece below 500 kb. Enjoy!

Hi folks! This beautiful piece is the first movement of Augustin Barrios Mangore's La Cathedral. It's a great exercise for both left and right hand. Practice the chord changes slowly at first. Some of them are quite tricky.

HI! Since I got a lot of positive response to my first John Dowland piece, I now present: "The Frog Galliard" by John Dowland. I have to admit that this is not the whole piece, only about 2/3rds of it. I wanted to have a better sound quality so I had to keep it short. Maybe I will add the rest some day. I used a capo at the 3rd fret to make it sound more Lute-like, for this was originally a lute piece. I transcribed it without capo, so that you do not have to buy one. ;) Have fun!

The Modes are sectors or excerpts (with the span of an octave) from a diatonic 2-octave scale starting with A (a). There are always two modes that fit together. They are related via the Finalis (finishing note). The half-steps are always between e and f and between b and c. The modes are not scales in the strict sense of the word. They are just fragments of scales that encapsualte the note-material of melodies used as model. There are Authentic (original) and Plagal (derived) modes. The Authentic modes are formed over the finalis. Th...

"Oh Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" is one of the 63 works that form the "St. Matthew Passion" by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Passion is a monumental piece written for classical choir. This outtake is a short impression of how you can arrange classical music for the electric guitar. What I did was to take the 4 voices of this counterpoint (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and transcribe it for the guitar. In order to reproduce the character of a large choir I used not only 4 but 6 guitars (I doubled the tenor and bass voices one octave higher) and in the background there is ...

Hello folks! This is an excerpt from J.S. Bach's "Fantasia and Fugue in A minor". It's originally an organ piece and some parts of it almost impossible to play with the guitar. So I transcribed the piece for 2 guitars. Have fun! -=[Azrael]=-

Hi folkz! This is a lil repeating pattern with a odd 5/4 rhythm. You can play it anywhere on the fretboard. I just added a lil decending run to complete it. You can also use the repeating section and move it up and down the fretboard - have fun!

Hi! This time with Claude Debussy's masterpiece "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" ('La Fille Aux Cheveaux de Lin'). This is a quite challenging piece with a lot of tricky chord changes plus a very tricky harmonics part in the end which needs a bit of explaination. All the notes in brackets are harmonics - the first one is just a barre chord on the 12th fret - a natural harmonic thing. All the others (starting with the note on the 22th fret) are artificial harmonics. On an electric guitar you would simply create them with the pick and the edge of your thumb, ...

Hi! This is Invention Number 13 out of the 15 two part inventions by J.S. Bach. There is a lot of tricky interplay between both guitars so check it out carefully! Enjoy!

Hi! This time with a lil piece by Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) "Etude No. 5 Op. 48". This is an extremely good exercise for your right hand. Throughout the whole piece you have to play arpeggios (same figure for the right hand all the time!) using the right hand pattern: p-i-m-a-m-i. Right hand fingers: p (thumb), i (index), m (middle), a (ring), ch (pinky) Work this movement out very slowly and very properly to get a good tone - this is the easiest of the right hand picking combinations (I think ... *LOL*). Have fun!

This is an ever growing, alphabetical Index of Musical Terms! bagatelle baguettes balalaika ballo balzato banda

Yo! Another one from Vivaldi's Masterpiece The Four Seasons. It's the 4th Movement called "Winter". I did it this time with only one guitar and the rest with "normal" instruments because I thought it sounded better on this one. You will find a 25th fret in the tabs every now and then - I did it by sticking a coin into the gap between my neckpickup and the neck. That gave me the additional fret I needed. *LOL* It is a very good exercise for scales and patterns - just pick out any of them and practice it along with a metronome - some of them are real tr...

When a string vibrates, it is not only an up and down movement of the whole string, like a simple sine-wave, but it is full of multiple vibrations layered on top of each other (overtones). These overtones (in guitar-language often refered to as "harmonics"), depending on how loud every single one of them is and how they blend together, determine the character and "texture" of the sound. That's why a piano sounds like a piano, a harpsichord sounds like a harpsichord, a harp like a harp, a guitar like a guitar and so on. Having a string that is fixed on two points and...

Welcome to another multi-guitar session! This time another piece from J.S. Bach's "St. Matthew Passion". As already mentioned the "St. Matthew Passion" and the "St. John Passion" are pieces originally written for choir and orchestra. But as with almost every orchestral piece you can create a 'piano reduction' of it containing all the important melody lines. And what can be played with one piano can also be played with 4 or more guitars. :) This time I didn't write every guitar part separately. I just extracted the first 3 voices (Violin I, II and Viola) and...

Hello! This is the very well known piece "Leyenda" (Legend) by Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). As a pianist and composer, the Spanish musician Albeniz was a leading figure in the creation of a national style of composition in Spain. This exercise focuses on the right hand picking. While the first section is quite easy (p,i,p,i throughout), the second one involves a not so easy version of arpeggiated picking (p,i,m troughout) with chords in between. p = thumb i = index m = middlefinger Try to play it as even as possible, and add a few dyna...

I'm trying to put a little glossary of Musical Terms at your disposal, since there have been a lot of questions about musical terms. This is, however, only a brief description of the terms, but I hope it will help. All the other letters are still under construction. a battuta a cappella a capriccio

Hi! This time with the full first movement of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" - "Spring"! This is a pretty good excercise in legato (a lot of trills) and stretching. Some parts are pretty difficult and require a good picking technique - so watch out and practice slowly. However, I only transcribed the lead part of it in order to keep the tab short. :) The file is extremely compressed, but I think the sound is still OK. At least I hope so! Enjoy!

Si contra Fa est Diabolos in Musica Ever wondered where the Solfege terms UT, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA (SI) originate? They can be traced back to Guido d'Arezzo, a Benedictine prior of the Camaldolite Monastery of Avellana (990 - 1050). Guido spent a lot of time inventing the Staff or Stave (for notes). He invented the system of allocating syllables to the first six notes of the scale - (UT RE ...

Hi! This is an example of what can be done with complex polyrhythmic material. It's a little piece I wrote inspired by Gyorgy Ligeti's "String Quartet No. 2". 4 guitars starting at 4/4 and slowly building up to 13:8 / 12:8 / 11:8 / 10:8 and going down again till they reach 3:4:4:4 in the end.

A little history lesson: this might not directly help you with your playing, but it gives you some kind of insight into why today's music sounds the way it sounds. DIATONIC TUNING (natural tuning) This is the mathematically correct way to tune an instrument. It is based on a partial tone series, which is divided into 12 tones per octave. A fifth, for example, would have factor 1.5 and a third factor 1.25 from the root tone. The problem with this tuning is that since the frequencies of partial tones depend on the root tone, then some notes, F for...

Tempo Markings and Definitions Here I want to show you a list of how the meaning of tempo definitions have changed. The Metronome as we know it has been invented by the Austrian Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (1772-1838) in 1816. Before that time musicians used terms like Andante or Vivace to describe a certain tempo or speed of the music. The list below shows that there was no general rule or standard of measurement. For some musicians Andante was much faster than for others. A good example is J. S. Bach. A lot of his...

Hiho! I just came up with a pretty simple, yet tricky idea on how to train the fingers and develop some feel for different lines played at once. This is nothing new. It's just a variation of the old Pedal Tone idea. A pedal tone is a note that keeps repeating over and over while there is a melody formed in the free spaces. You can hear lots of pedal tone licks in my arragements of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" (You can find them on my instructor's page here: Azrael's Instructor Page

Renaissance composer John Downland wrote many early music pieces for lute. The lute was a forerunner of the guitar. These lessons are transcriptions of Dowland pieces.

Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most important musicians in history. These lessons take pieces by Bach and transcribe them to be played on guitar.

This tutorial will explain polyrhythms and show you, with the help of sound files, what they sound like.

A little history lesson: This might not directly help you with your playing, but it gives you some kind of insight into why today's music sounds the way it sounds.

When a string vibrates, it is not only an up and down movement of the whole string, like a simple sine-wave, but it is full of multiple vibrations layered on top of each other (overtones). These overtones (in guitar-language often refered to as "harmonics"), depending on how loud every single one of them is and how they blend together, determine the character and "texture" of the sound. That's why a piano sounds like a piano, a harpsichord sounds like a harpsichord, a harp like a harp, a guitar like a guitar and so on. Having a string that is fixed on two points and...

Hi! This time with Claude Debussy's masterpiece "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" ('La Fille Aux Cheveaux de Lin'). This is a quite challenging piece with a lot of tricky chord changes plus a very tricky harmonics part in the end which needs a bit of explaination. All the notes in brackets are harmonics - the first one is just a barre chord on the 12th fret - a natural harmonic thing. All the others (starting with the note on the 22th fret) are artificial harmonics. On an electric guitar you would simply create them with the pick and the edge of your thumb, ...

Hi folkz! This is a lil repeating pattern with a odd 5/4 rhythm. You can play it anywhere on the fretboard. I just added a lil decending run to complete it. You can also use the repeating section and move it up and down the fretboard - have fun!

Hello! This is the very well known piece "Leyenda" (Legend) by Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). As a pianist and composer, the Spanish musician Albeniz was a leading figure in the creation of a national style of composition in Spain. This exercise focuses on the right hand picking. While the first section is quite easy (p,i,p,i throughout), the second one involves a not so easy version of arpeggiated picking (p,i,m troughout) with chords in between. p = thumb i = index m = middlefinger Try to play it as even as possible, and add a few dyna...

Hi! This time with a lil piece by Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) "Etude No. 5 Op. 48". This is an extremely good exercise for your right hand. Throughout the whole piece you have to play arpeggios (same figure for the right hand all the time!) using the right hand pattern: p-i-m-a-m-i. Right hand fingers: p (thumb), i (index), m (middle), a (ring), ch (pinky) Work this movement out very slowly and very properly to get a good tone - this is the easiest of the right hand picking combinations (I think ... *LOL*). Have fun!

Hiho! I just came up with a pretty simple, yet tricky idea on how to train the fingers and develop some feel for different lines played at once. This is nothing new. It's just a variation of the old Pedal Tone idea. A pedal tone is a note that keeps repeating over and over while there is a melody formed in the free spaces. You can hear lots of pedal tone licks in my arragements of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" (You can find them on my instructor's page here: Azrael's Instructor Page

Hi! This time with the full first movement of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" - "Spring"! This is a pretty good excercise in legato (a lot of trills) and stretching. Some parts are pretty difficult and require a good picking technique - so watch out and practice slowly. However, I only transcribed the lead part of it in order to keep the tab short. :) The file is extremely compressed, but I think the sound is still OK. At least I hope so! Enjoy!

Yo! Another one from Vivaldi's Masterpiece The Four Seasons. It's the 4th Movement called "Winter". I did it this time with only one guitar and the rest with "normal" instruments because I thought it sounded better on this one. You will find a 25th fret in the tabs every now and then - I did it by sticking a coin into the gap between my neckpickup and the neck. That gave me the additional fret I needed. *LOL* It is a very good exercise for scales and patterns - just pick out any of them and practice it along with a metronome - some of them are real tr...

I'm trying to put a little glossary of Musical Terms at your disposal, since there have been a lot of questions about musical terms. This is, however, only a brief description of the terms, but I hope it will help. All the other letters are still under construction. a battuta a cappella a capriccio

This is an ever growing, alphabetical Index of Musical Terms! bagatelle baguettes balalaika ballo balzato banda

The Modes are sectors or excerpts (with the span of an octave) from a diatonic 2-octave scale starting with A (a). There are always two modes that fit together. They are related via the Finalis (finishing note). The half-steps are always between e and f and between b and c. The modes are not scales in the strict sense of the word. They are just fragments of scales that encapsualte the note-material of melodies used as model. There are Authentic (original) and Plagal (derived) modes. The Authentic modes are formed over the finalis. Th...

Tempo Markings and Definitions Here I want to show you a list of how the meaning of tempo definitions have changed. The Metronome as we know it has been invented by the Austrian Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (1772-1838) in 1816. Before that time musicians used terms like Andante or Vivace to describe a certain tempo or speed of the music. The list below shows that there was no general rule or standard of measurement. For some musicians Andante was much faster than for others. A good example is J. S. Bach. A lot of his...

Hi folks! This beautiful piece is the first movement of Augustin Barrios Mangore's La Cathedral. It's a great exercise for both left and right hand. Practice the chord changes slowly at first. Some of them are quite tricky.