Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] amusing solo guitar trick: Bohemian Rhapsody

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 2/2/07, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Jonathan King wrote:
>
> > On 2/2/07, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> >>
> >> So on the 2-hour DVD he shows how he plays four songs and he includes a
> >> PDF file with his transcriptions of those songs with both ordinary
> >> musical notation and tab.  It isn't classical guitar notation though -
> >> no left or right hand fingerings are given explicitly, but I guess the
> >> tab mostly takes care of that problem and the video also fills in the
> >> blanks.  The PDF looks really nice and clean.
> >
> > Would you need right hand fingerings for most of this stuff? Left hand
> > wouldn't hurt, though. My guess is that it was/is easy to get the
> > transcriptions down with "normal" music software but the finger stuff
> > would then be kind of a pain.
>
> Usually the right hand fingering is understood, or there are a couple of
> easy choices, so it usually isn't given in classical guitar transcriptions
> except in an occasional tricky spot.

Yes; I knew that. :-)

>  With the DVD, which is really
> *great* by the way, you get a split screen view of left and right hands
> and he explains every technique and trick in detail.  The DVD is an
> amazing piece of work because it allows you to either watch his hands
> (split screen) or see the music itself with the part played being
> highlighted -- this is accomplished using two "angles" on the DVD (a
> concept I was not familiar with).

So that is pretty cool. Yeah, the DVD spec does have this "angle"
notion that you very rarely see exploited. I think I've heard of a DVD
of a play (I think Shakespeare) performed "in the round" where this
was handy in its natural interpretation. It's nice to see it being
used for something else.

> You can choose two videos (angles) for
> the same audio.  Edgar Cruz, it turns out, is a fantastic teacher

I could see that from the short clip on youtube.

> >>     "There are more than 400 solo guitar arrangements in my repertoire
> >>     which consist of popular requests and personal favorites.  My dream is
> >>     to see the guitar literature grow to the proportions that piano music
> >>     has and I would like to contribute personally to this expansion."
> >>
> >> That is a great plan, but there are two problems: (1) it is *way*
> >> harder to write a good chord-melody arrangement for guitar than for
> >> piano, and (2) it is *way* harder to play the chord-melody on solo
> >> guitar than on piano.  Way, way, way harder.  So a beginning piano
> >> student can learn a piano arrangement that would challenge any
> >> professional guitarist.
> >
> > Yeah. I remember like two years ago when my son was playing a cute
> > little cut-down version of "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" by
> > Rimsky-Korsakov that I thought would sound really cool on guitar. And,
> > I'm sure it would, but despite the fact that it was basically block
> > chords on the left hand and a melody on the right, it was ludicrously
> > hard to play solo.
>
> So I just looked it up and found it here:
>
> http://www.8notes.com/scores/2915.asp?ftype=gif
>
> I can see that it is in Eb major (three flats).

My son is a genius, but he wasn't playing it in Eb major back then.
:-) I think the version he had was maybe even in C major, which
actually isn't a great choice for guitar. I think I decided that D
(maybe with a dropped D tuning) would work best.

> Coincidentally, at least
> two of the Queen pieces arranged for guitar by Cruz were in Cm (3 flats).
> As Cruz explains, for guitar you want 4 sharps or fewer, so the Cm pieces
> were transposed to Bm (2 sharps).

Yup; makes sense.

>  The Rimsky-Korsakov piece could be
> transposed to D (2 sharps) or to E (4 sharps), but you don't want to play
> it in Eb.

No way. For this, you would have to take advantage of open strings.
I'm definitely thinking of dropped D.

> Just from looking at it, my first impression is that E will be
> the better choice.  For one, it's way easier to deal with the sheets
> because all you have to do is change the key signature, change accidental
> flats to naturals and accidental naturals to sharps.

Hmm...I'll take a look. All of these posts about guitar plus my son's
occasional whining have gotten me back to the idea I should be playing
more guitar. (Right now, he plays piano and viola. Viola was an
awesome strategic choice because few string groups have enough
violists, so he's now gotten a chance to play some pretty challenging
stuff on viola which has speeded  him up a lot on that instrument.) In
a couple of years, when he wants to impress the babes, I'm thinking
his musical skilz will transfer pretty well to other idioms. Or, to
put it another way, it's a *lot* easier to play rock than Bach.

> I'm not saying that it will be easy after that, far from it, but that will
> make it a lot easier.  If you stay in Eb, forget it!

I was looking at it in C, trying to transpose to E (I think), and it
wasn't trivial. I will look at this again, though.

> >> That said, I would love to see more nice arrangements like these.
> >> They are really fun and sound great.
> >
> > They are heroic to do, of course. I had a classical guitar teacher for
> > one year in college (they offered subsidized therefore cheap lessons
> > from music school students), and for his MFA recital he ended up doing a
> > lot of transcribed Bach, mostly violin solo stuff, and there were catty
> > comments from the piano students there about how guitar was obviously
> > not a great classical instrument...
>
> Their just jealous because they can't take their pianos with them on
> vacation.

s/Their/they're/

> I would call the guitar "a great little instrument."  It can
> play classical music.  It can do a lot for you.  It isn't loud (unless you
> plug it in) compared to most classical instruments.

You have a point. Even my son's 14" viola (something like a 3/4 size
violin) can get surprisingly loud. Now that he's growing like a weed,
I can see a 17" model could be loud enough to need a mute.

> You definitely can
> play very beautiful, expressive music on it.  I remember that Beethoven
> made a very positive remark about the guitar when he heard it played, but
> I can't remember it exactly -- something like "It's like an entire
> symphony all in one small instrument" -- I'll look that up.

Well, sure. In many ways, the most fun I ever had was playing rhythm
guitar in my high school jazz ensemble and stage band. I actually knew
something about theory, chords and playing like this before I got
there, and the stoner guitarists who were also in that class watched
me play and were impressed enough to try and pick some of this stuff
up. (Disclaimer: I'm sure I SUCKED compared to the other real
guitarists on this list.) Two years after I left high school, I got to
see one of the jazz ensemble's concert and this one guy who was a
solid two chorder when I was a senior was suddenly doing some very
impressive jazzy stuff on guitar for My Old School, and I flattered
myself in thinking I had been something like a good influence.

Or, maybe not.

jking

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