Lesson 8

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Lesson 8 TEF's

Notes to Lesson 8

If any lesson of this course was "tailor-made" for a fingerstyle guitarist, it's Lesson 8.  Lesson 7 suggested we try different right hand approaches to our intro's, and Lesson 8 is now giving us some examples.  Mickey introduces a new term, string bass, that he uses to describe playing a bass note and then a chord for two beats.  He gives several arpeggio examples, and also asks for us to create some new ones. 

Classical guitar instructors have used the famous "120 Studies for the Right Hand" by the early 19th Century virtuoso guitarist, Mauro Giuliani, since its first printing.  He uses a C and a G7 chord and puts the right hand into practically any conceivable pattern.  A number of contemporaries of Maestro Giuliani's wrote countless exercises from the right hand and many survive to this day.  Look for works by Sor, Aguado, Carcassi (who made exercises seem like beautiful music), and Carulli.  I have included a TEF of the Giuliani exercises in this lesson.

A few years back, I wrote a series of 20 warm-up exercises that reflect a little more modern sound (hopefully making them seem like less work and more fun.)   I culled some of Mauro's most important patterns, added a few new ones,  and used them with a more modern sounding chord progression that I'd gleaned from a Jerry Reed composition.   In the TEF, I show repeats as a suggestion for isolating sections of the exercise.  The TEF doesn't actually repeat any segment.  Also, this TEF has additional notes imbedded, discussing each exercise.

In the TEF "Lesson 8 - Student Ideas - G.tef", I've created 9 new examples from Mickey's suggested chord progression, using all kinds of fingerstyle ideas from the classical training of Laurindo Almeida and Mauro Giuliani through Chet Atkins and Merle Travis.  What I discovered was that the more I did this, the easier it became.  That isn't always the case, but this time it was.  Note that the left  hand uses the same chords, but the right hand is doing something different.  To my way of thinking, this is justification for being a fingerstyle guitarist.

One of the exercises in the Student Ideas is dedicated to Laurindo Almeida.  When Laurindo played a tremolo, he played it as a triplet with the P and A fingers picking together.  I've never looked at it as an either-or method, but rather another tool in our tool box.  As an equal opportunity exercise writer, I've included a standard PAMI tremolo in the 20 Warm-Up Exercises.

I've left additional measures for you to try some ideas of your own.  When you've created something you'd like to share, send it to me in any form.  I'll put it into TablEdit using the stylesheet we've created for this course and include it in this lesson.  Paul Perillat has generously sent an introduction in G that he created.

Just keep it FUN!