Fingerstyle Guitar Tunes - Beautiful Airs & Ballads of the British Isle

Book excerpt: This fingerstyle guitar collection features 20 engaging lyrical tunes from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales plus three original pieces by accomplished guitarist, trumpeter and composer William A. Bay, president, and editor-in-chief at Mel Bay Publications. Tasked with writing intermediate-level arrangements in either standard or dropped-D tuning, guitarist/arranger Raymond Gonzalez displays uncommon music rethinking skills while preserving the plaintive and lilting nature of these enduring melodies. Unique to these settings, you will find sparse, open-chord harmonies accentuated by double hammer-ons and pull-offs, and the odd harmonic mixed with normal tones within a melodic line— all reminiscent of gentle waves washing up against a rocky island shore. Conceived to be played on either steel or nylon-string guitar, these pieces are written in both standard notation and tablature. Includes online access to the author’s own audio recordings.