In this guitar lesson, we continue to examine classical music pieces as a means to further our mastery of the guitar. This time around, we take a break from Bach and look at Prelude 2 from the great guitar composer Heitor Villa Lobos.

Hopefully you are not getting tired of seeing endless lessons on classical music pieces. Regardless if you are a classical music fan, the one thing I can ensure you is that learning classical pieces will do wonders for virtually all aspects of your guitar playing. In the last series of lessons, we looked at an extremely challenging Bach piece which covered a nearly endless array of techniques. Heitor Villa Lobos's Prelude 2 also covers a wide range of technique, and unlike the Bach's Sonata # 1 For Solo Violin Presto, which had a rhythmic constancy, the Lobos piece features a great deal of rhythmic variation.

Guitar tablature for this piece is readily available and so I will not display it directly in the guitar lesson. I recommend downloading the free Powertab software. Powertab is what I use for creating all the tablature on the site. You can download it here. Once you have Powertab installed (sorry - it is only available for Windows), you can view the tab for Villa Lobos's Prelude 2 by going here.

Note: This part of the guitar lesson covers measures 1-15.

Though I follow the tab at the above link fairly closely, there are a couple places where I deviate:

Measure 7: I play this measure as follows:

E--------5--8--9--5--------
B-----5--------------5-----
G--6--------------------6--
D--------------------------
A--0-----------------------
E--------------------------

Measure 8: For the scalar run I prefer to use alternate picking instead of legato. Legato is the intended technique for this section, but I prefer the aggressive sound of picking as it builds more tension and energy for the next measure. Of course alter ante picking this section up to speed will take a great deal of practice if you have not built up your picking chops, whereas the lines are played fairly easily with legato. In any case, do what works!

Measure 15: This is perhaps the toughest part of the piece as you have to immediately transition into it from the rapid arpeggio. In my recording, I took some liberty with the end of this measure and drew it out somewhat before ending on the E Maj chord.

Though the tab for this piece shows straight 16th notes, I highly suggest listening to recordings to get a feel for the rhythm. In my recording, I think I pause at places longer than most players, but I tried my best to emulate the way classical players play it.

I think you will find that this piece is fairly easy to play for the most part. However, there are a few measures that require special attention:

• 5: In this measure, note the quick position shift from 1st fret up to 12th. Practice this over and over until you can effortlessly nail the shift.
• 9: As I mentioned above, this measure is fairly easy to play using the legato technique. However, if you wish to alternate pick these lines (as I did in my recording), then you will need to make sure your picking chops are in excellent working order!
• 14-15: In measure 14, it will take some practice to nail the descending arpeggio smoothly. But to add to the difficulty, immediately upon ending the descent, you have to transition to the chordal lines of measure 15. You will probably find that playing these measures is the toughest part of these first 15 measures. And as I listen to my recording, I see that I have room for improvement as well!

I hope you enjoy the guitar lesson and I hope it improves your guitar playing as I envision. Good luck!

Brian Huether