Classical & Nylon-String Guitars
Classical Riffs for Guitar
- 32 Pages
- Published by Cherry Lane Music
Product Description30 famous classical melodies from cartoons, movies, commercials and television. Presented in standard notation with tab, chords, performance tips, and background information, this is the book for guitarists seeking to incorporate quotes from the masterpieces of classical music into their solos. Spice up your solos the classical way – with the famous melodies you’ve heard in countless cartoons!. . . More >>
Classical Riffs for Guitar
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It has short riffs of classical music such as, “Air on the G String” by J. S. Bach, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and “Symphony No. 5 in C minor” by Beethoven, and many more such classical pieces. However, you are only given short riffs of the main themes of each piece. For instance, in “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” there are 8 bars of single line notes (melody) plus the accompanying chords above the notation. Also, everything is written in TAB in case you can’t figure out the simple, single-line melody notes.
I can’t see anyone learning these short snippets just for the fun of being able to play a few bars of some famous classical piece of music, but it is very useful for sight-reading and rhythmic improvement. For instance, 16 bars is given for “Flight of the Bumblebee” where many sharps, flats and a few natural signs are used. It’s good for getting used to reading accidentals although in the TAB it just gives fret numbers. “Ave Maria” and “Marche Funebre” look good for rhythmic reading practice.
Some key signatures have up to 5 flats or 4 sharps in them and unless the title of the piece tells you it’s in a minor key you will have to figure that out for yourself. It’s excellent reading practice and will certainly make you concentrate on what you are doing. To make it even more challenging try playing these riffs up the neck out of the lower positions, especially the ones with a lot of flats or sharps in the key signature! I suggest to try not to depend on the TAB to tell you where to go but to really try to learn where the notated notes are. For instance, find where C# is on the fourth string without looking at the tab – it’s at the 11th fret).
I don’t use this book very much but I still think it’s got a purpose nonetheless. I will probably use it more now that I have found it and unearthed it from the bottom of my stack of music books. At first I didn’t like it very much but have come to change my mind about it. I don’t use an electric guitar to play the riffs, but whatever type of guitar you play won’t matter.