Short Solo Studies for Classical/Finger-Style Guitar - Previous Editions
Short Solo Studies for Classical/Finger-Style Guitar is the full title of a three book series that started out in the heyday of my music teaching in the 1980's. The original book was a single volume with just 5 arrangements. These were a mix of some early English dance tunes from the Elizabethan collector and publisher John Playford, with additional music of my own. These books came about due to the difficulty I had in sourcing suitable music for my students. Plenty of other music books were available with a few finger-style arrangements in easy keys but then they would progress too quickly into keys that for young guitarists especially, were technically very demanding.
Between 1980 and 2000 I taught guitar at many schools in the counties of Surrey and Hampshire, south west of London. The heads of music in these schools encouraged me to enter my most promising students in for grade exams, early on this would have been for Classical Guitar only as the main examination boards had not yet diversified into offering grades in other styles such as Jazz and Rock. I had reasonable success in getting a small number of students through their early grades but knew that there must be a way of tackling the technical demands of grades by providing music to fall back on that was both great sounding and easy to play. I achieved this by carefully arranging music in keys that could fully utilise the open bass string notes for an accompaniment to the melody played on the first three treble strings.
When I first started teaching grades, Grade 3 was the entry-level with most study pieces being in the keys of C or G major requiring the fretting of bass strings. This is where the problem for young guitarists begins with small hands unable to finger the bass notes and melody notes all at the same time. The idea then came for me to put together a collection of music in keys that would only use open bass notes. This soon resulted in the very first book I made in the 1980's of just 5 pieces. Any lack of fretted bass notes was more than made up for as the arrangements allowed freedom of the left hand, giving the student guitarist opportunity to explore higher positions on the fretboard whilst maintaining a bass note sound from the open strings. The book was very popular with my students, it helped them in achieving great sounding pieces with the least amount of effort. For some the music was satisfying enough to play without having to take exams, for others it provided a useful step, an encouragement to go on to do well in their grades. Certainly, it worked well for me as I was beginning to get more students through their guitar exams, for a few of my school students getting those grades helped in being awarded scholarships into further education. I can't begin to say how fulfilling it has been for me, to know that I have helped and contributed towards the future of the youngsters I have taught. Right from the outset I could see that this simple book of 5 pieces could easily expand into at least 3 books and a plan came about. I would use books 2 and 3 to gradually introduce all fretted notes on the bass strings so that by the end of book 3 the best part of the guitar fretboard will have been covered.
The years have rolled on, I have collected and arranged a lot more music for this series but until relatively recently I have not got around to publishing the revised editions. The closest I got to doing so was in 2019 with a complete edition of book one with 10 pieces as seen on the front cover illustration shown here. It was a short run production with only a very few books released and now out of print. Books Two and Three were drafted but never published, It's just as well, since there were some weaknesses in the content, these issues are presently being attended to.
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