Acoustic Guitar Player

I was sitting around this morning and listening to an album that I haven’t listened to for a few weeks now.  I like acoustic guitar recordings a lot, but I also like to explore other material.  The album that I was listening to was by the Norwegiuan sax player Jan Garbarek, Tunisian Oud player Anouar Brahem and percussionist Shaukat Hussain. I noticed that the first song was a Norwegian folk song that had been turned into an improvisational piece. 

 It got me thinking, maybe I could write a simple guitar arrangement of the tune, the melody was short but quite interesting.  So I sat down and worked out the basic melody and because it was in C, I decided to tune one of my guitars to C, well C with an F on top, instead of the high E, up a semi-tone.  The reason for the F is because the song is built around C minor and I felt that by going up to F you’d have the C on the 7th fret instead of 8, this is much more suitable for improvisation.

An explanation of what I’ve done:  The first 6 bars is the head (melody), the next 4 is an extremely simple arpeggio vamp to play around with and improvise over.  If you can find a melodic instrumentist ( that can improvise) to play with this could be a very suitable piece of music. The arpeggio is to give you something to improvise over.

The tune needs to be played very loosely but in time.   The original that inspired me is on a recording called Madar on the ECM label.  I’m assuming that because it’s a traditional folk song there wouldn’t be an issue with copyright. I’ve just taken the basic idea of a melody and not copied an arrangement.  

Tune the guitar from the lowest bass string:  E down to C, A down to G, D down to C, G stays the same, B up to C, E up to F.  It will take a couple of tunings for the guitar to settle.  

To download the sheetmusic and tab for free

C open tuning arrangement for guitar in pdf

For other great resources check out John Fahey…he may not need an introduction.  And Steve Baughman, a fantastic open tuner.

Fingerstyle & Slide Guitar in Open Tunings Taught by John Fahey. For Guitar (Fingerpicking). Solos. Grossman Audio. All Styles. Book/CD Set. 56 pages. Published by Grossman’s Guitar Workshop. (99801BCD) Level: Intermediate. See more info…

Beginning Open Tunings By Steve Baughman. For Guitar (Fingerpicking). Methods. All Styles. Book/CD Set. 32 pages. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc. (20056BCD) Level: Beginning. See more info…