Arrangements for Classical Guitar

Fingering notations should be taken as suggestions, not as mandates.

Although I agree in general with the philosophy espoused by John Williams of choosing the simplest possible fingering for a passage, I do not follow it religiously. First, what is simple for one person may not be simple for another. Second, two or more fingerings may be of equal difficulty, requiring additional criteria to make a decision. Third, a more difficult fingering may sound better. Fourth, when different fingerings produce different tones and textures, one may choose a fingering depending on how one wants to interpret a piece on a given playing. Finally, different guitars produce different tones and one guitar may be more difficult to play than another, causing one to choose a fingering based on what guitar one happens to be playing.

The fingerings I provide usually match how I play a piece and are therefore only suggestions. Sometimes I include a second fingering when the way I play a part is likely to cause most players difficulty.

I use C to indicate a barre across five or six strings and ¢ to indicate a barre across up to four strings. Eventually, I'd like to be more precise about barres as well as the variety of barres (e.g., pivot/hinge barres), but have yet to settle on a notational convention. I'm leaning toward the use of fractions (e.g., ⁴/₃ means three strings are stopped with the fourth string being the lowest string, meaning strings 2–4 are stopped). Still, that does not account for how to notate concurrent barres with multiple fingers (usually just two).

I usually preserve the original time signature of a piece. Whenever a piece consists exclusively of tuplets (e.g., Romanza or Preludio en Do Menor), I always transform the time signature to the equivalent compound meter that eliminates the need for tuplets. It's much easier to read music that isn't filled with tuplets. When tuplet-filled music notates a tuplet only in the first measure to keep the score readable, the music no longer says what it means.

Classical guitar music typically does not include chord diagrams. In contemporary guitar music, chord diagrams indicate chords to be strummed. The chord diagrams in the arrangements that contain them are suggestions for left-hand positioning and/or supplementary indicators of the underlying harmonies (useful for spontaneous improvisation). They do not indicate chords to be strummed.

The chord diagrams also serve the purpose of informing the musician of the harmonic foundation of the arrangement, facilitating the comprehension of what is to be played. Not all chord diagrams included in the music are to be fingered exactly; they serve as guides only. In all cases, the suggested fingerings in the music supersede the chord diagrams—and you are free to ignore all such suggestions, applying whatever fingering you find most effective. As an aside, I do not use the chord diagrams at all. I find the process of preparing them an aid to studying harmonic and compositional structure.