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Study in C by Giuliani

This Study in C by Giuliani is great for developing your thumb technique as much of the melody resides in the bass in this piece. Actually, the melody continually switches from the bass to the treble but the bass has a large part of this.

It is noteworthy to see how Giuliani displays his expertise in melody, harmony and counterpoint writing in what is basically a two-part piece. Indeed, he gets such "mileage" in respect to these from such a simple piece that it was no wonder he is regarded as one of the greatest guitar composers of all time.

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Additionally, the drive and momentum of this piece is what gives it "life" and "personality". From bar 1 to bar 24 it doesn't let up and indeed the momentum builds to the climax of the half-note chords of the last 2 bars. You can also see the sound principles of harmonic construction where often the bass is moving downward and the treble is moving upward and vice-versa. Yes it's simple, but it's almost a perfect demonstration of these ideas.

Here is a youtube video of the piece...

To see what I mean, an interesting exercise is to play both the treble (upper) notes and the bass notes separately. Often when you play a bass line separately it doesn't always "make sense" on its own. When you play the bass line from this Study in C by Giuliani it makes "perfect sense". It is a great little melody in its own right. When you hear it juxtaposed against the treble line you'll then understand you need to make sure that the both melodies have equal attention to detail so they both stand out in their own right but, more importantly, help to highlight each other to make the music even greater.

As I mentioned above, it makes for great counterpoint. Wikipedia.com says of counterpoint...

"In its most general aspect, counterpoint involves the writing of musical lines that sound very different from each other but sound harmonious when played simultaneously."

I think Giuliani has achieved this magnificently in this Study in C which means it's up to us to reflect that in our performances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint

Enjoy!

You can download a copy of the Study in C by Giuliani here

Just right click and "Save Target As" for windows or click on the link or print the PDF file in the new window. There is both

normal notation and tablature for those that want/need it.

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