Hello, my name is Filippo, I'm from São Paulo, Brazil. I'm 53 years old, and have been playing the acoustic guitar since I was 4 or 5. I had a rock band in my 20's (I played the electric guitar) but then stopped playing for some time. It had been many years I had not picked up my acoustic guitar, but fortunately it came back to me recently with a strong will. I have been playing steadily, every day, for about 3 months. I'm enjoying it very much and I think now it will be for the long run... In this time I started with Leyenda (Asturias), and have been practicing it since. My next piece was Capricho Arabe, through which I encountered Elite Guitarist, with Tavi playing the piece. I've seen and heard many performances, but Tavi's is definitely my favourite one, I really like the interpretation and the expression he puts on each note. I also keep practicing it. My current piece is La Catedral. I already got the first two parts and am now in the middle of the third (right where the virtuoso solo part starts). It's all very demanding and I don't want to get into that part until I am comfortable enough with what I have until now. The 3 mentioned pieces are still very raw, it will be months until I get them beautifully, hopefully! Anyway I'm enjoying it all very much, and Elite Guitarist has been a great source of inspiration and education. Thank you very much! Next I want to work on Milonga, by Diego Pujol, I got to know it through a message Tavi wrote in this Forum. I've looked everywhere for tabs but am not able to find them... would anyone know? Also I like Farewell, which is on Elite Guitarist, I will be tackling it soon. Sometime this year I would like to go to New York to buy a good acoustic guitar. I would appreciate some advice/recommendations on which guitar to buy, in the US$ 1.500 range. Maybe only trying them personally will decide, I think it's very individual. Well, it's good to be here. Cheers!

Hola, my name is Eugenio, I'm from Mexico. I've just join the EG community. I'm a beginner,hoping to beccome an intermediate guitarist soon. I join because I like very much the tutorial "Un dia de noviembre" by Ines. Where can I find the full tutorial?

Besides, is there any guide on how to start and a recommneded order for the tutorials?

Gracias

Hi Stefan, and first of all, welcome to one of my Transylvanian compatriots! It is great to have you be a part of the EliteGuitarist community and I hope you will experience great growt as a musician with our tutorials and the help of others around you. Thanks for introducing yourself and feel free to ask any questions you might have in the future. Cheers! Tavi

Hello, my name is Stefan and I live in rainy Wales (UK) but hail from the sunny transylvanian hills. I have recently joint EliteGuitarist triggerd by Tavi's interpretation of Asturias, a piece which has been haunting me for many years and which I will give a serious attempt this time. In fact I'm deeply in love with flamenco music but have regular periods of playing classical pieces at intermediat level and here is yet another one. I am a self taught guitarist and play purely for my own pleasure and satisfaction and I hope to widen my repertoire with some of the beautiful pieces presented on this website.

Thanks Tavi, been working on El Noi De La Mare, and for the wedding it's Moon River arranged by Jeremy Choi.

Hi John, welcome to the forum although you are not new to the website. You have been with EliteGuitarist from the very beginning and I am so glad that you are continuing to benefit from the materials we are making available. Congrats on booking your first classical guitar gig. Please record it if you can. I am anxious to hear your performance of it. Do well and leave it all on the court, so to speak. Again it's great to have you be part of the community here. What pieces are you working on these days?

Hi my name is John and I’m from the Rep. of Ireland and I’ve been a member for about a year now. Although I have not completed every tune in the course, I have found the tutorials to be excellent, and find myself taking on pieces I probably would have not dared in the past. My guitar experience is very limited. I was shown a few chords in my teens had an electric guitar or 2 over the years but never did anything serious with it. There were many years where I didn’t play at all. So after seeing a fab performance of Tavi’s one day about 2 years ago on the net, I decided that classical was the way I wanted to go. I realized knowing the chords to some old folk or rock song by itself was not what people wanted to hear unless you were going to sing it too. As it is I can’t sing so the performance of a classical piece on guitar, I thought, could stand up autonomously to an audience. I think deep down almost everyone has some love or appreciation of the classical genre regardless of their musical preference. I find it hard to get time for practice every day but when I do I try to put in about 90 mins on a given day. This course has thought me many things such as the importance of fingering, expression, and above all patience. Tavi and his team do a wonderful job with the tutorials and it goes to show how much of a difference professional instruction can make compared to Youtube freebies. I am attending a wedding this month and was asked some months ago to perform a particular piece at the wedding, a favorite of the bride (my niece) so this will be my first real performance to an audience. I think it’s fair to say that the Elite Guitarist course has given me some confidence to attempt something like this, and I wish to convey my gratitude. So I will see how things go on the day. ;)

Thanks Tavi and Taso. I hope the performance goes well. It’s nice to commit to something and it’s helped keep me on a schedule. Looking through the beginner pieces, I want to focus on some of them and play them well. Im working through Packington’s Pound right now.

Thanks for the suggestions on Capricho. I’ve learned a bit of the first section (chords and scale runs) but I think I’ll take some time away for a bit a and work on fundamentals. I think I’ll need extra help with that piece when ready.

Ben

Hello Ben,

Welcome to EliteGuitarist and as Tavi said kudos to you for putting yourself in "risky" performance situations. Please keep us posted on how that goes and if you have any questions!

There are so many wonderful ways to play this piece and I recommend you take it one seciton at a time i.e. the D minor section, the F Major section and the A Major section as well.

The descending passage of slurs in the beginning functions as a great study for this technique as well!

Hi Ben,

Welcome to the forum and to our community of guitar fans and students. Congrats first of all for putting yourself in ”risky” performance situations. this is such an important step in anyone’s musical development and I commend you for it. I hope your performance goes well and be sure to let us know your impressions of your first public performance.

I hope you will take your time with these repertoire pieces and I hope that you will accomplish your goals as a performer. Capricho Arabe is a wonderful piece to aspire to. I invite you to continue posting questions or insight you might have over the coming months. Welcome again and I wish you great success with EliteGuitarist.

here is a performance of Capricho Arabe by Taso Comanescu, one of our instructors.

My name is Ben, i joined recently. I’ve been playing for about 2 years, am self taught and consider myself about an expierienced beginner/early intermediate player. I struggle with a good right hand and also with taking on too many pieces at one time, especially pieces that are too diffcult for me.

I would like to be able to play more expressively, learn the fingerboard beyond 5th position and play with nails. Some pieces that I’ve learned are Sor study in Bm, Lagrima, Adelita, various Sor OP60 studies and Spanish Romance.

I really have an appreciation for Tarrega, Barrios and late Boroqe era guitar music. My long term goal is to perform Caprico Arabe and hopefully most of the Tarrega Mazurkas along the way.

I’ll be performing for the Christmas Eve church service at the church my mother plays organ at, and it will be the first time I’ve ever played for an audience. I’m pretty nervous just thinking about it. I found a version of We Three Kings that I was able to learn.

NIce to meet you all. I’m looking forward to this.

Welcome GregAlfred! First of all, thank you so much for the very kind words. Yes, we want to leave no stone unterned in these tutorials without driving more advanced students crazy with the level of granularity found in our tutorials.

I look forward to the jazz guitar lessons for the same reasons: increased ability for theoretical analysis. I think a strong theoretical foundation can help with the memorization of the piece and with the overall phrasing freedom. Keep up the good work and thanks for being part of our community here at EliteGuitarist!

My name is Greg and I live in the Pacific Northwest after having grown up in Los Angeles. I play classical guitar with an occasional break to study flamenco music. I'm a designer and brand strategist by trade but playing music is my lifetime pursuit. I've recently become interested in improvisational music which has resulted in a really deep dive into fretboard harmony. Increasing my fluency in theory and an understanding of the fretboard has immediately improved my relationship to playing, both technically and theoretically. For me, I realized that the gap in understanding fretboard harmony was affecting my ability to play, as it made reading and playing too mysterious at times. Lastly, I recently acquired a Renaissance lute built for me by Mel Wong in San Francisco, which is a fantastic lateral move to playing the Spanish guitar.

What I respect the most about Elite Guitarist so far is the attention to detail in their tutorials. As a player in the advanced intermediate/early advanced stage of ability, I appreciate how Tavi and his colleagues fill in all the details, so there are no gaps when studying a piece of music. It's a unique quality that I've only experienced in one on one instruction with a good music teacher.

David L., that is a lot of music your working on at the same time. It's inspiring to see your passion and drive to play the guitar. Recordings?

Hi Alanna, it is so great to have you here and welcome to EliteGuitarist. I am so glad that you were able to rekindle your guitar practice after all these years of not playing. It sounds to me like your love for the instrument never left. I love the fact you want to play more expressively; I think that is the very area that separates guitarists these days. If it is not played beautifully, it's not worth listening to, in my opinion. Keep up the good work and share a video of your progress with the rest of us. Welcome Alanna and feel free to ask any questions you may have! We are all here to help.

I'm Alanna, an empty nester who would like to finally learn to play classical guitar with expression. I was fortunate to have classical lessons in school from elementary through middle school from a wonderful lady named Mrs. Joy. She taught us basic technique using the Shearer I book as well as a flamenco and some caribbean calypso rhythms. Progressed to being able to play Romance and La Grima but that was the end of the road (moved) I loved it so much that I still have my classical guitar from those days (as well as a couple of others) and have played the same songs over as a meditation I guess you would say. For me it is personal and therapeutic practice. I would like to learn to play more pieces beside the few I know and would like to learn to play more expressively.

I'm working on 12 songs from the website right now trying to polish them up. I practice for an hour in the morning before I go to work and a couple of hours a night. I started working on LaCateral allegro as an arpeggio study for my right hand it is going to take me quite a while to get it up to speed.

Hi Dave! Welcome to EliteGuitarist and it's great to have you here. I want to see a picture of the hair band from the 80s :) The 80s were the best man! Here are a couple of questions for you: What pieces are you working on these days and what is your practice regimen like?

Hi my name is Dave and I reside in sunny central Oregon. Seems like I've been playing guitar forever. I started out in the 80s playing in a hair band but that led to a pretty rough lifestyle so I switched to classical in the 90s. Spent the last 6 yrs. playing jazz but recently started back at classical where I think I'll spend my remaining time as it is really my favorite style. I just want to get to the advanced level and break out of intermediate so I seriously need to get some advanced instruction. This seems like the best place to get that instruction. I hope some others will chime in and we can develop a nice community of guitarist and friends.