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La-Catedral (preludiosaudade) by Augustín Barrios (1885- 1944)
Time 1:58

Preludio saudade is the first of 3 movements of Barrios’ la Catedral. A slow piece of arpeggios with a bach undertone. Preludio Saudade is a song of great emotional depth and emote many deep feelings. This movement is technical and demands a wide coverage of the guitar neck. (Preludio Saudade) is part before part 2 (Andante Religioso) followed by part 3 (Allegro Solemne). Barrios wrote many difficult but beautiful compositions to showcase his technical brillance to the world. Augustin Barrios was from-a little known, back then-paraguay, and he prefers his classical guitar strung with 6 metal strings. A Normal guitar as you know has 3 nylon (bass), 3 metal(treble).

Technique
Lento means slow. Preludio saudade is definitely a “think ahead” song. If you start too fast, you may fumble at the latter part with the many chord transition. 48 bars. Right hand plucking consists mostly of the (amipimam) pattern. Focus more on the left hand fingering as there are truckloads of chords at the higher frets of the guitar. At the closure, Bar[47] there are a series of harmonics at the high end 19th fret.

Excerpts from Barrios la Catedral (Preludio Saudade)

Tips
To reach 19th fret for harmonics, I use my Thumb (inner side) to produce the harmonics. You can subsitute with the index fingers if find using it more comfortable. There are some tight chords, your left fingers will all bunched together. Play slow and place each finger acuurately to optimise space. Also experiment with thumb (back of neck) position

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under 1.SONGS, Augustin Barrios. 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.