Here’s a short piece I’ve just finished writing for guitar; maybe it will become part of a series. The style here is romantic and the texture is more homophonic than contrapuntal, a departure from the keyboard-oriented canons I’ve been working on recently. It feels good to now be writing for the instrument I actually play. This is in fact my first “composed” piece for guitar – my past guitar work has been improvisational and it’s taken me some time to move from a spontaneous to a planned approach to working with the instrument. One thing I’ve learned is that writing for guitar involves a constant interplay between abstract musical thinking and a nut-and-bolts examination of the instrument’s possibilities and tendencies. I suppose that’s true for any instrument, but it’s especially so for the guitar because the guitar is polyphonic, but not in the rational, orderly way the keyboard is polyphonic; instead, in a quirky, limited way, where the fingers of the left hand can quickly become immersed in a nightmarish game of Twister if the composer isn’t careful. But one nice thing about being the author of the piece you’re playing is that if a certain note gives you trouble you have the authority to change it, and I did that several times in the course of practicing this! In the clip, you’ll hear me playing my 2009 Connor guitar. Feedback is welcome.
[audio mp3=“https://rudiseitz1.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/estudio1enestiloromantico.mp3"][/audio] ■