chrisliang.com

Adelita- Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909)
Grade 4- Late intermediate
Time 1:22

The girl’s name Adelita is a variant of Adela (Old German) and Alida (Latin), and the meaning of Adelita is “noble; small winged one”. This song is colorful in tone and fun to play. If you are confident in your barre chord technique, this is the song for you. Tarrega not only wrote numerous original compositions for the instrument, he also transcripted works from other composers like Chopin. I hear a little bit of Chopin’s influence in Adelita.

Technique
2 parts. Play as AABBA. 16 Bars in Total. Lots of Barre Chords, not for young ones with smaller hands. Lots of sliding, hammer ons and pull offs and a wide neck span on the guitar. The latter means you play from the open string to 13 fret in this song so a lot of neck movement. Overall a very good workout for both hands and highly enjoyable to play.

Excerpts from Tarrega's Adelita

Tip
Bar[11] and [12] have a couple of barre chords with hammer on and pull offs which I spent the longest time mastering. I would say these 2 measures are the “make or break” section of the song. If you can pull this off, the rest of the song is easy. Otherwise try tarrega other shorter preludes instead, get into the his mode and try Adelita later.

Download Tab | Download Midi

Further Reading
I learnt Francisco Tarrega’s Adelita from the Francisco Tarrega Collection in Tabulature by Paul Henry. 14 pieces for classical guitar. Comes with a companion cd with tracks. 64 pages. Paperback

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under 1.SONGS, 4.GRADES, Francisco Tarrega, Grade 4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.