When you take up the acoustic guitar you want to play songs, right? Maybe to sing some songs around the campfire. Lots of pop songs and folk songs sound good accompanied by the acoustic guitar but a sudden wish to play Spanish guitar songs often takes hold of you. If you can play Spanish guitar songs or Spanish sounding instrumentals it is a mark of your progress as a guitar player. This is a wish that many guitarists have but not too many know how to go about finding suitable Spanish flavored music to play.
In order to be some help to these guitarists who wish to have a serious guitar piece to play, I will throw in some suggestions. I know that many of the songs we identify as Spanish guitar pieces are fairly advanced technically but I am not going to leave any out of my list on the basis of technical difficulty. Any guitar piece you hear is probably available on tab and it is up to you to decide once you attempt to play the tab whether you are trying to play something that is too hard for you.
So when we think Spanish music what artists do we think of? There is The Gypsy Kings, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Paco De Lucia. How about Jose Feliciano. He played Spanish guitar style arrangements of a couple of Beatles songs.
Or there is Spanish Caravan by The Doors. This was actually a mixture of a Flamenco guitar style called Granadinas and a classical guitar piece called Asturias by Isaac Albeniz. The guitar playing sounded impressive on the record but it is not a great technical challenge. You can get the general flavor of the intro to Spanish Caravan by playing the B, C and D bar chords at the second, third and fifth frets. They are all the same chord shape which is based on the A major chord shape in the first position. Here is the B bar chord in tab:
e–2——————–|
B–4——————–|
G–4——————–|
D–4——————–|
A–2——————–|
E———————–|
Now to get the Flamenco flavor into these chords, take the bar off and put your first finger back on the fifth string and let the first string ring open in all three positions.
So now your B chord is:
e–0——————–|
B–4——————–|
G–4——————–|
D–4——————–|
A–2——————–|
E———————–|
You can also try the same technique by removing the bar from the F major shape, and moving it up the fretboard to see how it sounds.
Some popular Spanish songs you could Google are: Compostelana, La Tarara, Volver, Bomboleiro, Bomoleira, Adelita and La Morena de mi Copla. These are all well-known songs that chords, lyrics and tabs should not be too hard to find on the web.
Ricky Sharples
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/spanish-guitar-songs-chords-and-scales-681276.html
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
How do i use chords in a song and i want to learn more scales?
i have been playing the guitar for more than 7 years i just listen music and i learn some tips how to use some chords but i get trouble some times when i want to play by my self… is there kind of rules i could follow so as to be able to play any song? and how can i get (learn) cool scales like spanish guitar… by the way i use an acoustic guitar and i love it!
I recommend going to your local sheetmusic store or just any store that sales guitars and ask them for some great books to use.
References :
Perhaps you should consider taking a few lessons to compliment what you have already taught yourself.
If you know the position of all the notes on the fret board its just a matter of learning the key signatures to each scale…
try this site http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/ you can listen to the chords as you play so you can tell if you”ve got it right! hope this helps.
References :
Well do you know about chord progressions?
Key of C Major
Notes – C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Chords C maj D min E min F maj G maj A min B dim
Triad Chord forumlas
Maj – 1 3 5
Min – 1 b3 5
dim 1 b3 b5
Maj or Min 7, just add a 7th note to the chord.
b = lower hte note one half-step, or one fret
Play around with chord progressions
I IV V I – Very Common Acoustic guitar progression.
I IV V7 I
type in common chord progressions for the guitar and you can get a list of many more.
And many others, start out in the key of C and then spread to other keys and minor keys.
If you need any help IM at fenderrhythm at yahoo. I am a part-time theory teacher.
References :
Ahh Grasshopper…one must learn some theory as to what is a fifth, seventh, root, major, minor,etc…
References :
Get scale lite, which is a program that has tons of scales in it (including spanish ones). And if you want to learn chords to play over scales you should learn a little theory, if you haven’t already. For instance a major chord consists of 1 (root) 3rd and a 5th from a major scale.
References :
http://www.scaletool.com/
Dude, if I were you I’d just learn a bunch of Machine Head songs, even if youre not into metal, learning their songs is a great way to pick up on how to play various scales. Prepare to detune to drop d.
-J.
References :