Classical Guitar for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is David and welcome to this course, Classical Guitar For Beginners. All you're going to need for this course is a guitar like this one. This is a Ny long string guitar, but you're very welcome to use a steel string acoustic guitar. We're going to be playing through this book, The Guitarist Way, Book One. I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy, but I will be putting the notes on the screen as we go along so we can make some notes and some comments. And you can see what I'm playing through now. You might be thinking, I don't know how to read music or I don't know any music theory. That's absolutely fine. The great thing about this course is there's not going to be any long lectures or exercises. Instead, we're going to learn by going through a series of pieces which get more exciting and more interesting as we go along. Also going to be learning everything you need to know about left hand and right hand technique, so that you can really master the guitar and get the basics correct from the very beginning. By the end of this course, you'll be able to play so many pieces, including this one which I'm going to play for you right now. 2. Tuning and Holding the Guitar: Just before we get into playing, there's a few things we need to look at just so we can get ready to play. The first is tuning the guitar. I highly recommend that you get yourself an app on your phone. There's plenty available for free, and they'll be able to help you tune the guitar yourself. If you have a new guitar, it's very likely that you'll need to keep tuning it. Because the strings take a while to settle down, they keep going out of tune. But just make sure you stay in tune. It sounds as good as possible. The second thing is about holding the guitar. Often with the classical guitar, you'll see players play with their left leg raised and the guitar is then placed on their left leg. This is fine if you want to do this. You can also play with the guitar on your right leg, as you might normally see someone play. The most important thing is that the guitar is balanced. You can see the sound hole is right in the middle of my body. I should be able to move my hands freely. I should be very relaxed. I'm not having to force the guitar or hold it in any way. It's able to just rest on my leg and rest within my body. The most important thing is that you stay relaxed because if you don't, you'll get some tension and that can lead to some injury in the long term. It also won't help you to sound any good with your playing. Just take a while to settle down. Get comfortable and make sure that you're feeling very relaxed. The guitar is just resting in your body. 3. Open Strings: Okay, so I think we're ready to get started with piece number one. As you can see, there's two different notes in this piece. There's the note, which is the first string on the guitar, and there's the B, which is the second string on the guitar. As you can see, there's four of them within each bar. Each block of music each group of these notes is called a bar. There's four notes in each bar. We can tell this from the time signature. The top number is a four. Also, you can see in this piece they've written the count of four underneath the music. As you're playing along, you want to be doing four s, then four s, then four s again, and so on and so forth. We'll hear the whole piece in just a moment. Above the music, you'll see that there's the letter. And the letter. Well, what does that mean? Well, those are the different fingers that we're going to be using. Start with one of the most important techniques with the classical guitar, and this is called walking fingers. Finger is the index finger. Finger is the middle finger. Now, this isn't actually what they stand for. It's just a coincidence that in English, I and M, index and middle is the same as I and M. We're going to play the first with our index finger, second with our middle finger then. And you can see that we have this walking fingers technique. Let me show you again. Then we do the same thing with the next four notes, which are four B's and keep going now four. Then we go on to the second line. Now the only note that's different from here is the final note. You can see this white, this note that isn't filled in this is called a Minim, and this lasts for two beats, hence Y 3.4 are written underneath. You want that note to ring on just a little bit longer. The key things to remember with this piece is our walking technique, we're going to use and finger for that, to think about this count of four. Let's hear the whole piece. 4. Minims: Moving on to the second piece. We can see that we have the same two notes as before. We have an E, which is our first string, and we have a B, which is our second string. We don't need to learn any new notes for this piece. However, we do see more minims. Remember, these minims are these notes which last for two beats. These are going to sound longer. You need to hold, let them ring on for longer. Remember of course, our walking fingers. It's very important that we get this technique right. If we start doing something else, it's going to be very hard to fix that later on. Of course, try and think about the count. You want to have quite a strong pulse as we play. Let's play through this second piece. A. 5. The Note G: As we come onto the third piece, we're introduced to a new, this is going to be the, to play this, we're going to play the third string on the guitar and it sounds like this, the same idea as before with walking fingers is going to apply to this piece. Also, we need to think of this count and of this pulse. We still have four beats, four counts in every bar. We do have a lot more minims in this piece. You need to watch out for those notes, which last for two beats. Let's hear this piece now. The key things to remember at this point is our walking fingers technique, which is using our index and our middle finger alternatively. The other thing is to think of a strong sense of a pulse, to really count the music As you play, there's going to be four beats in each bar at this stage. Try and feel that as you're playing through the pieces. 6. Prelude: Now we come onto piece number four, and this is called prelude. This is really your first opportunity to take what you've learned from the previous three pieces and put it into something a bit more musical. Now, something new that you'll see in this piece is we have some dynamics written in. We have which means piano, which means to play softly. And we have which stands for forte. And that means to play loud or to play strong. As you're playing, try and implement those dynamics into your playing. So at this stage, we've learned three different notes. We've learned the note which is the first string, the B, which is the second string, and the note which is the third string. We've also seen three different note lengths or note values, crotchets or quarter notes. They last for one beat minims, which lasts for two beats. These are also called half notes or whole notes. And these last for the entire bar for four beats as you're playing along. As I said, try and think of this count, try and think of this pulse as you're playing. We've also seen a couple of terms for dynamics. We've seen for piano, which means to play softly, and for forte, which means to play loudly. Now we're going to start learning some notes using the left hand. 7. Using the Left Hand: The first note we're going to use, which uses the left hand, it's A note A. This is the second threat on the third string. Remember this was a G that we've just played. Second Threat on the third string. It's very important that use the very tip of your finger and you have this nice cold to the finger. We don't want anything to be locked or anything too tense. We want to place the tip of the finger just behind the threat. It's very important that we play just behind the threat, because the further back you go, the more pressure you need to get a clean sound. You'll hear it start to buzz. The further back I go, the closer you are to the fret, the better the sound will be. Try and just bring your hand up to the guitar and your arm, and your elbow should be relaxed. The thumb should just be placed on the back of the guitar, so that the fings and the thumb really just come together like this. You don't need to press too hard, you don't need to feel any tension. If you're not getting a good sound, just try and think of using the very tip of your finger. Place just behind the fret. As we can see, the note A is here between the G and the lines. Let's see if we can play through this piece number five. That piece was played entirely with Minims. Piece number six is going to use a combination of minims and crotchets, or half notes and quarter notes. Remember to keep in mind everything we've said so far, especially walking fingers. I can't emphasize enough how important this is. I've seen so many students start to forget about this as we go along. And it's so hard to fix it later. Make sure as you're practicing all these pieces, you keep using those walking fingers. 8. Three Notes: Next piece, piece number seven is going to use three notes that we've looked at so far, which is the third string A, which is the third string with the second threat, which is the second string in this piece. Again, it's very important to think of this count of four. As you can see, we have four notes in each bar apart from this final bar, which has this whole note or semi brief, which is going to last for the count of four. It's at the end of this piece, you can see that there's two dots just before the double bar line. We haven't seen this so far, and this means to repeat. I'm going to play through this piece and see if you can listen out for the repeat. 9. Folk Song: Now we come onto this piece number eight called Folk Song. Again, this is a good opportunity to really look at some musical ideas and to show some musicianship. Now, there's no dynamics written in here, but you're very welcome to put in some dynamics if you want. You can either write them in the page or you can just think about them as you're playing. Again, we're seeing a variety of note values. Here. We have our crotchets or quarter notes. We have our minims, or half notes, or semi briefs. And whole notes, again, we have this repeat at the very end. I'm going to play through this piece now and see if you can listen out for some of the musical ideas I'm trying to put into the music to make it really come alive. So one of the key things we've looked at recently, and one of the biggest problems for beginners is this idea of using the left hand. It can be very difficult to get a clean sound. You might hear something like this. It's very important that we don't use too much pressure or too much force, but instead we make sure that everything is done accurately and correctly. Think about using the tip of the finger just behind the threat. You should be able to just bring the hand up to the guitar so the arm and your elbow is very relaxed. Then you should be able to just place your thumb on the back of the guitar, so that the finger and the thumb just come together. We want something very natural and something very relax. We don't ever want to have to force a note or to force a sound. If we're having to force a sound, it's likely that we're doing something wrong, and it's better to fix it than to just try and use too much pressure. 10. The Note C: We come on to piece number nine, we're learning a new note. This note is the note C. We can see that note C is just above the line. This is going to be played on the string, the second string. This time we're going to use the first threat. Now you notice that I used a different finger for this note. What we want to try and do is when we're playing notes on the first threat is to use our first finger. When we're playing notes on the second threat, like the note A that we just learned, is to use our second finger. What we don't want to do is to be jumping the same finger around everywhere. For now, it might seem easier, it might seem quicker, but as we get into more complicated pieces later on, you're going to need to use all of your fingers. And it will make for a much smoother sound if you can use all of them. This piece number nine just uses two notes, the C and the note B. I'm going to play through this piece for you now, and remember walking fingers. Let's also look at piece number ten, which uses the same two notes, C and B, but this time we have quarter notes or crotchets. Now that we're starting to use more notes with the left hand, it's very important that we get our finger in the right position, prepared and ready to play. What we don't want to be doing is to be playing a C, playing a bee. And our hand just disappears and we have to quickly find in time because it's just going to be rushed. It's just going to be a mess. You want to keep your finger nearby, ready to play so that we can quickly and smoothly change between any notes that we're playing. 11. Up From G: Piece number 11, we're going to bring together all the notes that we've learned so far. That's A, G, A, B, and C. Let's play through piece number 11. You can hear that the notes are going up in pitch and coming down in pitch. And we're starting to actually build a scale here. These are actually the first four notes of the major scale. 12. 12 The Fiddler: Piece number 12, The Fiddler, We're going to be introduced to a few more musical ideas. The first is a different time signature. If we look at the very beginning of the piece, we can see that the top number is now a two. Now, don't worry about the bottom number. It's always going to be four. In this course, it's also important to remember that this is not a fraction. Don't start thinking about it as a fraction. It's two independent numbers, but in this piece, the top number is a two. That means that we now have a count of two beats in each bar. Instead of counting to four like we've done so far, we're now just going to be counting to two. The other musical idea we have here is this hair pin, and this is called a crescendo. This might be a word that you've come across before. Crescendo just means to get louder. Let me play through this piece now and see if you can hear those musical ideas. Some of the common problems that people come across at this stage is they start to lose this sense of pulse because they're thinking too much about the left hand. I'd encourage you to try and think of getting your fingers prepared in the right position, ready to play. You'll notice when I play, my fingers aren't jumping around too much. It's very smooth. I always say that smooth fingers makes for smooth music. Get your fingers prepared and that way you can really focus on the pulse because that's really the most important thing which keeps the music running smoothly. 13. 13 Waltz: Number 13 is called waltz. Again, this might be something that you've heard of. A waltz is just a piece of music that is in 34 time. That's to say that there's three beats in each bar. We're going to be counting to three. We're also introduced to a new note value in this piece. This is the dotted minium. The dot means that it lasts for half of its value. Again, if you remember, a minimum lasts for two beats. Half two is 12.1. Is three. The dotted minim lasts for three beats. The normal minim lasts for two beats. See if you can listen out for this count of three in each bar. And remember that there's a repeat at the end of this piece. Now at this stage, you might be starting to forget some of the notes. Which note is, which note is B? Because they look quite similar and they can sound quite similar. It can be easy to make a mistake and to not actually realize that you're playing the wrong notes. I'd encourage you to look at the dictionaries and the markers within the book rather than writing anything down. If you write down underneath the note or whatever, it can actually just be a shortcut and you won't actually learn to recognize the note when you see it. But hopefully you're starting to get the idea of the notes and it hasn't been too difficult. 14. Dutch Folk Song: Number 14 brings together again, some more of these musical ideas. Dutch folk song is in 34. It's going to be a count of three beats in each bar. We have some of the dynamic ideas that we've seen before for forte, which means strong, for piano, which means soft. And we have this hair pin, this crescendo, which means to get louder. There's also, again, a repeat at the end of this piece. Let me play through this piece for you now. This piece really brings together everything that we've seen so far. It has four notes, A, B, and C, and it has some of the musical ideas as well. It also contains different note values. Remember this dotted minim lasts for three beats. Now might be a good time just to check that you've remembered everything. Hopefully, the way you're playing sounds a bit like mine. 15. Chinese Tune: Piece number 15 is called Chinese tune. This introduces a new note, the note D. This is going to be on the second string, The string, but this time we're going to place our third finger on the third fret. Hopefully you remember what I said earlier about using different fingers for different threats. As this is the third threat, we're going to be using our third finger. The note D is just above the note C and below the note. It's on this line between the notes, and we're back to being in 44. The count is going to be four notes in each bar, and remember to use your walking fingers. Let me play through this piece. Piece number 16 can be thought of as an accompaniment to Chinese tune. This has quite a confusing repeat structure. You can see after 2 bars, it has a repeat sign. So far, we've just seen it at the very end of the piece. This means that when you get to this repeat sign after two parts, you then go back to the beginning. You then continue as normal as there's no repeat sign at the very end, you don't need to repeat anything else. It is written to repeat the whole piece. This is because you're accompanying Chinese tune. But in this instance, we're going to ignore repeating the whole piece and just do this first repeat sign after 2 bars. See if you can follow along as I'm playing. Oh oh. 16. Merrily: Piece number 17 is called Merrily, and this is the first time that you might actually recognize one of the pieces that we're playing. Perhaps the biggest challenge with this piece is that we don't have many consecutive notes, so we're having to constantly change between different notes. And that means we need to be very prepared and very confident with how we're using our fingers. Let me play through it for you first and see if you recognize it. Again, if you're starting to forget which notes are which, it might be useful to use this five not dictionary again, I encourage you not to write any of the notes on the page, but instead to refer back to this and then try and work out the notes as you go along. I know I'm playing the pieces quite quickly and we're moving through everything quite quickly. Feel free to stop, pause the course, and just try and work out the notes before you start playing it. I'd also encourage you to spend a bit of time practicing each piece. I'm not expecting you to just instantly go from one piece to the next, but instead, it's nice to take some time and just practice through the pieces that you're learning, to try and make them sound as good as possible. 17. Morning Mood: Piece number 18 is another piece that you might recognize. This is called Morning Mood from Peer Gint by Greek. Again, this uses notes which aren't consecutive. We're going to have to think about moving our fingers smoothly. And to be prepared with the different notes for the different fingers before you start. It's important to think of the time signature, what the count is, how many notes are there, or how many beats are there in each bar? In this one, there's three beats in each bar. You want to feel that pulse and to think of that count of three beats. This piece we're introduced to a new musical idea. And this is called a diminuendo, which is just the opposite of a crescendo. A crescendo gets louder, diminuendo gets softer, and you can tell this from the dynamic markings. Let me play through morning mood for you and again, see if you can recognize this piece. You'll see again here that we've got the markings for walking fingers and M. Even if we're playing in 34 with three beats in a bar, you still want to be alternating using walking fingers. What you don't want to be doing is using the same finger again and again. I see that a lot. It's quite a bad habit to get into if you're still not doing walking fingers. It's very important that by now we start doing it all the time. 18. Study: Number 19 is called study. And this introduces us to a new technical idea. This is about playing two consecutive notes on the same string. You can see that we have the note C. Then after that, we have the notes. There's a specific technique we want to do to make sure this sounds as smooth as possible. After we finish playing the C, we want to keep it held down whilst we play. The. The C will be with our first finger and the D will be with our third finger. It's very important that we use these fingers and we're not sliding the same one all over the place. It's also important that we hold down the first finger, the C, whilst you play the D. This means that when we go back to the C in just a moment it will be ready to play. We also have that very brief diminuendo at the end, so you can, again, start to think of these musical ideas. There might be some that you think work, some that suit the music and they aren't written in. Maybe you want to play stronger. Maybe you want to play softer. Feel free to add in these ideas as long as they're intentional and you think they sound good. 19. The Ladder: Piece number 20 is called the Ladder. Again, this is one of our pieces that uses all the notes, or at least most of them, and puts them into a scale pattern. Here we have five A, B, C, and D. We now have the first five notes of the major scale. You may remember from the last piece that we're going to hold down our first finger on the note C when we play the note, this again will help us to have a much smoother sound as we're playing. Let me play through the ladder. You'll notice that the repeat sign here is not at the very end of the piece, but it's a bar before. That means that when you get to that bar where the repeat line is, that you're going to go back to the start and then repeat from there. When you get to the very end, then you can play that final bar on its own. You don't need to repeat that bar again. 20. At the Show: Piece number 21 is called at the show. Now we're really starting to bring together all the different notes that we've learned so far. There's six in total. There's and A which are on the third string. There's B, C, and D, which are on the second string. There's E, which is on the first string. Again, if you are going through any pieces and you forget what the notes are, I wouldn't recommend writing them on as a shorthand, but instead referring back to this dictionary. That way you'll actually learn where the notes are. Instead of just referring to what's written underneath. In this piece, we also see a slightly more complicated rhythm, where we have this minim in the middle of the bar. As we know, minims last for two beats. We need to think of counting to two as we play through those minims. There's still two more beats in the bar because we have four beats in a whole bar. We have a crotchet on the first beat and a crotchet on the fourth beat. This should start to make sense by now. Hopefully you'll be able to hear it when I play. We're also using the E again. We haven't seen that for a while and we need to think about holding down our first finger as we go between the C and the D. Some of these pieces are starting to get really melodic and with melody, we want it to be really smooth and joined up into phrases. This piece actually has quite a clear phrasing structure. We can think of the first 4 bars as being one phrase and the second 4 bars as being another phrase. A phrase is just a musical sentence. We want there to be this structure to each of the phrases. If I play through, you should be able to hear these phrases and also I'm able to make them smooth as I'm playing. Again, watch out for the repeat at the end of this piece. Hopefully you're able to follow along with my playing there. Think about this different rhythm in the third bar. You want that minium to last for two beats. Even though we've moved on from the early pieces where we're thinking specifically about counting and about pulse, it's really important that that pulse is always there. Whatever piece you're doing, however complicated or however exciting or interesting it is, you really want to think about these basic ideas such as pulse, so that it can really sound smooth and sound together. The listener at the audience will know if the pulse is falling apart. You want it to become really intuitive and for you to really feel it as you're playing, rather than actually having to think about it. 21. The Star: Piece number 22 is called the star. Again, this is one that I'm sure you'll recognize. Now in this one we have quite a complicated structure. We have this sign at the end which says DCL pene. This means play from the beginning and end at phen. A lot of the terms and symbols you see in classical music come from Italian. This is one example of that. This means, rather than a repeat, which means you do the whole thing again, you're going to go back to the beginning and finish at the word pen. Thankfully, because you probably know this piece so well, it should make sense and you should be able to just use your ear to follow along when to finish. Let me play through it and see if you can follow along with the structure. Again, the structure might seem a bit complicated at first, but hopefully this is the kind of piece that you can use your ear to follow along. And so it will start to make sense. 22. La Bergamasca: Piece number 23 is called labergamsca. This is a really good opportunity to think of this idea of phrasing. Again, remember, phrases are just musical sentences. It helps in music to sound more natural, to imitate a language that we might speak. You'll notice that phrases in music tend to follow a structure within themselves. For example, there might be 4 bars long, and then the second phrase might be 4 bars long. A lot of structure and most things in music are very intentional to simple numerical ideas. It's very unlikely that something just randomly fits within some number of bars. It's normally thought out and it is very, even, it is very ordered. When I play through this piece, hopefully we'll be able to hear this clear separation between the two phrases. With these different phrases, you can again start to think of the different musical ideas that we've spoken about. For example, forte playing stronger, and piano playing softer. This helps to add just a bit more interest to the music and also to differentiate between these different phrases. Let me play through it and see if you can hear these musical ideas as I'm playing. Hopefully you can hear those phrases very clearly. And you can hear that the music is very, it's very structured. These notes just don't randomly appear, But they're deliberately placed in a way to sound very musical and for a very smooth phrase. This piece also has an, a compliment to go with it. Number 24, If you want, you can try playing along with me. Or if you have a friend that also plays guitar, maybe you could see if you can play with them. Let me play through it so you can hear how it sounds. It's very simple. It's just four notes and you just keep repeating that as the other person plays the Berger Mascaie number 23. 23. German Folk Song: Piece number 25 is called German folk song. This is much longer, well not much longer, but it's definitely longer than most things that we've seen so far. This is a good opportunity to really think about some different musical ideas and specifically the idea of phrasing. The reason phrasing is so important is because it helps us to make the music sound smooth and to join the notes together. What we don't want to be thinking both as a performer but also thinking about the music as we're learning it. We don't want to be thinking one, then another note. Otherwise you'll look at a page of music and you'll just see hundreds of notes. What you want to do is you want to start to think of the music in different parts. For example, different phrases, different sections. Just like when you're reading a book, you don't think one word then another word, then another word. You start to break it down into sentences, paragraphs, chapters. It just makes everything come together and make it easier to tell a story rather than thinking of all these individual words. Hopefully, the same thing is starting to happen with these musical notes. I'll play through this piece. You should start to see some order to the music, some symmetry, and also just some very clear phrasing which sounds very smooth and musical with these longer pieces. It really gives us an opportunity for the music to go on a bit of a journey. You can state an idea, it can then kind of have a response, an answer, and then it can come back to that idea later on. With the very short pieces, there's just not enough time for any development within the music, but as this is a longer piece, it develops a bit more. It's very important that you try and show that as a performer, as you're playing the music, you want to try and show these musical ideas to the audience. You can think of it as telling story just like you would with a book. You have these different structures. As I said, paragraphs and chapters. Try and do the same thing with these phrases. As the music develops, try and add some musicality, dynamics, phrasing really make it come alive. 24. Using the Right Hand Thumb: Piece number 26. We're going to be introduced to a different finger in the right hand. So far we've only used index and middle. Now we're going to be using the thumb to play with the thumb, you just want to place it on the string. In this case, we're going to be doing the fourth string, which is the D string. You just want to freely move the finger across the string. You don't want to be pulling it away from the guitar, you just want a very smooth and clear movement like so These three strings are called the bass strings. These three strings are called the treble strings. We tend to use our thumb for the bass strings and our fingers for the treble strings. That's not an absolute rule. There are many examples where you cross over between the two, but for now, it might be easy to think of that idea. Thumb for the bass strings. Fingers for the treble strings. The note D is shown here, and it rests just underneath the stave. Now you'll see this letter. This might appear a bit confusing at first because it looks like the P that we use for piano to play softly, but is actually the letter we use for the thumb. These terms are actually Italian, like many musical terms. Stands for thumb. When you see that you want to use the thumb, let me play through this piece. And I'm actually going to use the thumb for every note just to make it simple. Even though we have the note as our first note, I'm going to use the thumb just to make it simpler. For now, hopefully you are also able to follow along with the structure of that. This uses all the different structural ideas that we've seen so far. We have a repeat after 4 bars. So we repeat those 4 bars, then as we go on, we see DCL pen, which means go back to the beginning and finish at. 25. Bugle Calls: Piece number 27 is called bugle calls, and of course, we're going to be using our thumb again. This time we're using the note as well. As I said, you would normally use your walking fingers for this note, but as we're just getting used to using the thumb, we're going to use the thumb for everything just to keep it simple. This is actually divided into three parts. As you can see, if you have other people that play guitar, you can try playing these different parts together. We're also in the time signature of 343 beats in each bar. It's actually very important that before you start learning or looking at any piece, you just check what the time signature is so that you can think of that count and you can really feel the pulse as you're playing. Let me play through all three lines of bugle calls if you want. You're very welcome to divide them up into three separate parts and you can play them as part of an ensemble. 26. In the Moonlight: Piece number 28 is called In the Moonlight. Now we're going back to our walking fingers. There's not going to be any thumb or right hand thumb in this piece. This is a good chance to just see if we can remind ourselves and check that everything is sounding good with our normal walking fingers. We want the music to sound really smooth and hopefully we can get a good sound. And we can think about preparing these different notes in the left hand. Here's in the moonlights, as you can probably tell, as the pieces get more interesting and a bit more complicated, so does the structure. But this allows for more of a story and more development within the music. Hopefully by now, you should be a bit more used to technique and where the notes are. And you can start to think of musical ideas, ultimately, as we're playing. Music. As I'm playing through these pieces, thinking about my walking fingers, I'm not thinking about the different notes. Instead I'm trying to communicate something artistic, something more musical. This is what these longer, more interesting pieces allow me to do. Having said that, as you're probably just starting out, I would recommend always going back, just to check that you're doing all the basics correctly. This includes walking fingers and of course, playing the right notes. 27. First String Melody: Piece number 29, We're introduced two new notes. These are going to be on the first string where we play. We have the note which is on the first fret. This is like the note C, but it's on the first string, so it gives us an we have the note which is on the third fret. This is like the D that we've learned, but this is going to be again on the first string. The F is on this line, just above the. The G is above the whole stave right here. Let's play through this piece first string melody and see if you can follow along the crack notes. You may recognize that the structure of this piece is very similar to the last one we did in the moonlight. This is because they can be played as a duet. You can try playing along with me on one of the other ones. Or if you have a friend that also plays guitar, you can try playing these two pieces together at the same time. 28. Good King Wencelas: Number 30 is called good King Wensls. Again, this is one that you might recognize. This doesn't have all the different structural ideas that we've seen in the last couple of pieces, but it is longer. It has some very clear phrases. This one actually has some words, as you know, that goes with it. This shows that it's really lyrical. There's a very clear melody and we want to try and phrase that and show that as we're playing through the piece. There are different dynamic markings written on There's forte to play stronger, for piano to play softer. We also have this weird little symbol here. We haven't come across this yet. This is a one beat or one crotchet rest. So instead of playing a note like we normally would, we're actually going to play this rest. It means just to stop playing, but we don't want to just kind of forget about it and move on. We want to actually count this rest and make sure that it's included in our counting and our playing. If I play through this piece, you should be able to hear that and also think of these different musical ideas that I just spoke about. There is also a repeat, so you can repeat this piece if you want to, but you'll notice that those rests came at a point where you might actually breathe if you were to sing this. And that's a really good way to think about it. It's also a good way to think about phrases. As you're speaking between different sentences, you'll often take a breath and we kind of want to take a musical breath as we're playing different phrases. You can think about that and you're playing especially if there's a rest written in. 29. Aunt Rhody: Piece number 31 is called Aunt Rohde, and as you might expect, it uses quite a few of the notes that we've been looking at. It also has different rhythmic ideas. It has this crotchet rest, you need to think about that. It has a dotted minim at the very end. It has different rhythms within the bars. You may need to do some counting. In this case, you can actually write the numbers down just to check that you're playing at the right time. We're in 44, There's going to be four beats in each bar. You just need to make sure that everything is aligned and you have a strong sense of pulse as you're playing. I'll play through this piece and this time I'll play the repeat with it. So as you can hear, it's not as complicated as it sounds. It actually has some really clear and some very nice phrases as well. It's a very nice and simple melody. However, when you're first looking at a piece, you might not know how it sounds. You might need to think of this count, think of this pulse, and to work out what the rhythm is before you start playing. 30. The Tallis Canon: Speaking of slightly more confusing rhythms, piece number 32 actually starts not at the beginning of the bar, but at the end of the bar. You can see that we have one note on its own, and this is called an upbeat. As we're counting, normally we will count 12341234 and so on and so on. But in this case, we're going to start counting on the note four because we have this upbeat. This piece would be like this, 412-34-1234 and so on. This is actually very common and it happens in so many songs that you probably know it's really not that uncommon at all. However, it can be confusing when you first see it because you think it's a whole bar when it's actually just one note, it's just an upbeat as you're playing, it's probably more important than before to think of this sense of pulse so that you stay on track. I'll play for the piece and see if you can feel this pulse as I'm playing it. Now, you may also notice that at the end of the piece, there's only three beats in that bar. That's because as we have one note at the beginning as an upbeat, we can take it away from the final bar. This means that it evens out in the end. This is true here, because we have a repeat. We don't want to have five notes in a bar at any point. If we had four at the end, there's three at the end. So that when we repeat that one beat upbeat at the beginning is accounted for. 31. Oh When the Saints: Number 33 is called When the Saints I'm sure you'll recognize this piece as well. This also explores a slightly more confusing but a slightly more interesting rhythmic idea. This piece starts on beat two. Now, you may not have thought of this as you sing along to it, but it's also a good example of how so many songs don't start on beat one and they just sound completely normal. This is one of those examples. As I'm playing through, I'm going to be thinking of this count, 2341, 2341, 2341, 2341. As you can hear, it sounds fine. It sounds as you'd expect, completely normal. It's just something that we need to be aware of if we're playing through a piece that we're hearing for the first time, or perhaps we don't even recognize, maybe you don't know this piece, in which case it's quite important that you're aware that we're starting on beat two. This, of course, has a fantastic melody that probably you do recognize. And so we really want to show that by playing smooth phrases and different musical ideas. Let me see if I can show that to you. And also if you can see where we're starting with the beats. And to try and feel that pulse within the music. I didn't play the repeat in this piece, That's because I just want to talk about this final bar where there's a crotchet. You might be thinking that's a bar with just one beat in it. Well again, it's because the very first bar, this upbeat, has three beats. As we repeat the three and the one go together to make that four, we want to make sure if the type signature is that there's always four beats or the equivalent of four beats in every bar. 32. In the Deep: As we come onto piece number 34, we're going to be using all of the open strings. So far we've looked at the first string, second string, which is third string, which is, we looked at one base string, this was a D on the fourth string. There's also A on the fifth string, and there's on the sixth string, there's two S, the first and the sixth string, both. And if you remember back to when we were looking at a bass note earlier, we were using our thumb. As you might expect for all of these bass notes, we're going to be using our right hand thumb. You will need to jump between them. It might take some time just to get used to finding the string. Think of this very smooth and clear movement. You don't want to be pulling the string away from the guitar, nor do you want to be pressing it in. You just want to be moving your finger, or your thumb, in this case, over the string. Let me play through this piece in the deep and see if you can follow along with the different bass notes. Remember we have, we have a we have D that we looked at earlier. 33. Needing a Rest: Piece number 35 is called Needing Rest. This is a very familiar baseline, this is 12 bar blues, which is very common in so much, of course, of blues, Also jazz and popular music as well. We're going to be using the bass strings that we've just been looking at, but there's also a new note here. This is another note. This is going to be on the second fret of the D string. Now we have three. We have the first string that we learned, we have the base string, we also have this note here. On the second fret of the D string. We also come across quite a few different rests in this piece. We have the one beat crotchet rest, but we also have this minimum rest, which lasts for two beats. You need to think about that as you're counting through this piece. Let me play through and see if you can, first of all, hear those rests. But also watch out for this new note, E. At this point, it may seem like the most complicated thing is not actually making a sound with the guitar. It's not the technique nor is it actually finding the notes. Because in this piece it's mostly open strings. Other than the, the most confusing thing is probably the rhythm and the structure. These look quite confusing. You can see at the end, we have this first time bar and the second time bar, this is something that we looked at earlier but it wasn't notated this way. As you get to the end, you see this repeat sign. So you go back to the beginning. However, it's now the second time we're playing through all of this, We don't play this first time bar, instead we play the second time bar. Don't forget to think about these basic ideas of counting, of feeling a pulse. If you want, you can maybe try playing along with someone if they know how to play a 12 bar blues. This is a 12 bar blues in the key of a major. If someone knows how to play blues in A, you could try playing along. 34. Jungle: Piece number 36 is called Jungle. And this, of course, uses more pace notes. How we're also going to be mixing in some walking fingers, some normal notes that we looked at earlier. We have these notes A and B. Now you could, if you wanted to use your thumb for all of these, but as there's actually quite a clear divide between the phrases, I think it would be a good idea to practice using our thumb for the baseline and then using walking fingers for the melody. See if you can follow along. As I'm doing that, this again has a repeat. But unlike the previous piece where you have a different ending, you can actually just do the whole piece in its entirety. Again, there's some rests and some breaks between each of these different phrases, so it's a good idea to practice using walking fingers and your thumb for the different phrases. 35. Fingers and Thumb: Piece number 37 is called fingers and thumb. As you might expect, we're going to be using our fingers and we're going to be using our thumb. Our thumb will, of course, play the bass notes, and our fingers will play the melodic notes on the treble strings. Now, for the first time here, we actually have two different voices. Voices, Doesn't mean that we're going to be singing, it just means that there's two different parts. Means there's a bass line, and that means that there's a melody on top. You can see that the bass notes have their stems pointing down, and that means that we're going to be using our thumb when we play those notes. The melody on top has the stems pointing up. And that means that we're going to be using walking fingers. So it might be quite confusing at this point to try and switch between the two. So we'll go quite slowly and see if you can get used to this changing between two different voices at the same time. 36. Song of the Mountains: Piece number 38 further explores this idea of two different voices, but this time we have something a bit more melodic. This is called Song of the Mountains, and you should hear that there's quite a nice melody, but there's also the occasional bass note thrown in. Whereas the previous piece, because it was on two different strings, you may have gotten away with not using walking fingers properly. With this piece, I'd really encourage you to use walking fingers. And then when it comes to playing the bass notes, just use your thumb again. In this piece, we have this idea of DC ph, which means go back to the beginning and finish when you see the word, which in this case is halfway through the piece. Pieces number 39.40 are actually just accompaniments. Introduce the idea of using the thumb and the fingers together. There's only four notes in each. That's 39 or 40. Or if you want, you can play this E minor chord which is played as. So these are just ideas, if you want to play along with someone else, you can try playing along with me. It should sound good, but if you're just on your own, you're very welcome just to play a song of the mountains as it is. 37. Carnival: Piece number 41 is called Carnival. In my opinion, this is the first time that we've actually really had some interesting ideas in both the melody and the bass, and they really come together quite nicely. To give us some harmony as well, you'll need to think about using your walking fingers and using your thumb. It's a good idea to have them both prepared at the same time. You don't want to be focusing on one and the other just does whatever. And then when it comes to doing the thumb, it's just not ready. You want both to be ready at the same time. This piece also has a first time bar, which you're going to do the first time you play through. Then after you've done the repeat, you're going to go on to the second time bar, which actually takes us through to the end. Let's play through this piece now, you may also notice that at the end of this piece, you see the word raal written on, which is short for real and tando, that means slowing down. This is a very common musical idea in all genres of music, probably even your favorite pop song. They slow down towards the end. Just gives a settling down effect. You can try and do this as you're playing. There's also a couple of different dynamic markings here. We have M, which stands for Metso Forte and that means to play moderately loud. Soon we'll come on to MP, which is Metso piano, and that means moderately soft. It's not too, not too soft is just in between. 38. Spanish Dance: Piece number 42 is called Spanish Dance. This is definitely my favorite piece so far. It's really pretty, it sounds really nice, and it's perfectly suited to the classical guitar. The great thing about this piece is that even though we have two voices, the upper melody and the bass, the bass is always on the first beat of the bar, apart from the very end. This means that it's a very clear rhythm and it gives us this downbeat very clearly, a feeling of strong, weak, weak. You'll notice that in this piece, the type signature is 34. We have three beats in a bar. It's a great way to give us this feeling of a structure, this feeling of strong, weak. If we have the base on the first note of the bar, we're also using all the different base notes that we've seen, at least the different open strings. We have D, which is the fourth string, A, which is the fifth string, which is sixth string. By using these different base notes, it also creates really nice harmony, which you'll hear as I play through it. So see if you can follow along and see if you can feel that feeling of a strong, weak, weak pulse. So, as you can hear with this piece, as well as having a really nice melody, a really nice tune, we're also starting to see some really nice harmony, which is just these two different voices combining together and fitting really nicely together. 39. Ukraine Folk Song: Now we come to our final piece. This is the one that I played at the very beginning. To show you what you'll be able to play, hopefully you feel confident to play through it now. This is called Ukraine Folk Song. It really brings together all the different ideas that we've looked at in the book. There is, however, one final note, a new note, and this is another A. This is at the very end of the piece, and this is on the fifth fret of the first string. For the first time, we're going to be using our fourth, our little finger or our pinky to play this note. There's also some really nice phrases, but because of the way it's laid out with the different voices, it's not quite so clear to see at first glance where these phrases are. You might need to think about this and listen to these phrases as you're playing. Let me play through it, see if you can hear these phrases. This is just a really good opportunity to put everything you've learned together and to make something really musical. You want it to sound like you're trying to communicate an idea, communicate something artistic. Not just playing a series of notes one after another. So let me play through it and let's see how it sounds. So again, with this A at the end, you really want to be preparing your finger, or at least getting ready for it, knowing that it's coming. Otherwise, it would be a bit of a panic and it'll be a bit sloppy. There we have it. That's the final piece. Hopefully it sounds really nice when you play through it. If there's anything you think you need to work on, feel free to go back over that particular idea, whether it's walking fingers, whether it's recognizing bass notes. And just spend some time practicing through that idea. Then as you come towards these later pieces, you can start to think of making everything a bit more musical. 40. Conclusion: Thank you very much for taking this course. I'm really excited that hopefully you're able to play through these later pieces. Now we've gone from the very beginning of classical guitar into playing some really nice music that sounds really good. Don't forget to think of these basic techniques that we looked at at the very beginning. It's very important that you practice them enough so that they become so natural and you become so fluent. That will make it much easier for the music to sound a lot more natural and fluent. If you can master these basic ideas in terms of things to practice, don't be afraid to go back to these earlier things, really spend a lot of time absolutely trying to master them. Hopefully you've also learned a lot about reading music. And maybe a little bit of music theory as well. Which as you've probably seen, helps to make the music more more artistic. It's not there to get in the way, it's there to help If there's anything you're a bit unsure of or you think needs a bit more work or a bit more time, don't be afraid to go back and just work on that thing on its own. Again, trying to master or just trying to really understand that musical idea when we look at it for the first time. Best luck with your practice with these pieces, and good luck with your future classical guitar playing.