Etude No.13, Op.100 by Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) – PDF or hardcopy sheet music and free video lesson for classical guitar. This performance and lesson comes from my book Classical Guitar Repertoire Lessons Grade 6 – Five pieces at the grade six level with dedicated lessons preparing you for each piece.
Jump to a section: Intro (1:46), Arpeggios (3:02), Slurs (4:17), Barre (5:36), Hinge-Barre (7:10), Walk-Through (11:04).
This a great study of arpeggios, slurs, and control over the texture. For this work I recommend turning the arpeggios, slurs, and barres into technique exercises to accomplish the skills before you tackle the piece itself. This is called “spot practicing” and turning your repertoire into technique exercises – When learning a new piece or maintaining a performance piece, you may find it helpful to use parts of your piece as technique exercises to train your muscle memory and stimulate your practice sessions. Here’s the YouTube link if you want to watch it there.
Here’s an additional video about hinge and pivot barres.
I find it easier to play this opus 100 using the weaker type of slur where you don’t actually pluck the string but lift the finger off making a softer sound. Is this cheating to gain speed? Should I force myself to actually pluck the string on every slur?
Thanks for all the amount of time you give to us through your teaching. I don’t know how else I could have come this far without your expert help.
It’s very important to practice both types of slurs so you have access to each one, especially if you need to clean up the sound of the second note. But during performance you can choose whichever is most appropriate to the situation and sound you are after. That said, just be sure you aren’t picking the easier one unless that is actually what you want for the piece.
Thank you. That sounds like good advice.