Guitar Arrangements

Since this page has become a place that I more or less share the things that I wish I was sharing with my Dad, I figured I would share some of the things I’ve been doing with classical guitar since his passing.

My biggest project has been the development of a book of arrangements that I made which adapt Renaissance lute pieces from the original tablature to modern notation so that they can be played on the guitar. Learning the process of reading the lute tablature and the various challenges with adapting it to modern musical notation, and developing the arrangements that I ended up including in the book took about two years. I self-published the book on the 5 year anniversary of my dad’s passing. The book can be purchased here if interested. I’ve included a couple of videos I made of me playing selected arrangements below.

I made the following arrangements earlier, both arranged from piano pieces. There was a lot of interesting hurdles in adapting a piano score to guitar that I’m sure my dad would have found interesting.

The first one I did is Träumerei by Robert Schumann, which I heard on the radio and thought it would sound nice on guitar. I found out after that there were other arrangements for guitar but I’ve never listened to or watched anyone play them.

The next one I did was from one of my favourite composers and pianists, Franz Liszt. My favourite piece by him is Un Sospiro, but that could never be arranged for guitar. At least not one guitar. This piece is called Romance (s.169), which lended itself well to guitar, but still presented some challenges.