Ejercicio in E Minor by Ferrer

This lesson comes from my book Classical Guitar Repertoire Lessons Grade 4 – Six pieces at the grade four level with dedicated lessons preparing you for each piece.

Ejercicio in E Minor from Coleccion 12a de Ejercicios by Jose Ferrer (1835-1916) – YouTube Video Lesson Link. This is another great piece for the grade 4 level that utilizes a full range of the guitar from the 10th position to the 1st. Because this is the same key signature as the last piece by Bosch I go over chords shapes instead of scales to cover some fretboard knowledge. I also talk about the phrasing and dynamic shaping of non-chord-tones and do a walkthrough of the piece.

Bradford Werner
Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.

4 Comments

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  1. Very well played, as always!

    I am just wondering about the level.

    Tárrega Etude E minor is also level 4. But the difference in difficult on these two pieces are rather big according to me. Either this should perhaps be grade 5 or Tárrega Etude E minor should be level 3. But Tárregas piece is always set as a level 4 piece.

    Thanks for your videos 🙂

    • In general, the grades have a range within the grade. There are easier grade 4 pieces and challenging grade 4 pieces. Often it’s not just the technique involved but also the scope of the piece in which case a short piece such as the Tarrega E Minor really only has one or two measures that are actually difficult so the challenge is contained to a small portion.