In this guitar lesson we will examine Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, Prelude # 1 in C Maj, BWV 846. Like most Bach pieces, this piece serves as a great means to improve left and right hand technique. It is not a flashy piece, but it nonetheless poses some challenges that will continue taking you on the endless journey to guitar mastery!

Most of the Bach pieces I have shown you have involved alternate picking across strings as well as endless chordal variation on the fretboard. This piece is no exception. Though played at a slow tempo, the biggest challenge of this piece is with the fret hand. The piece features a wide array of chord voicings, some of them requiring gymnastics on the fretboard...

Above is the tab for this guitar lesson - note that the piece uses a drop D tuning. For this lesson, we won't end up using the low E string, but from measure 10 on it will come into play. Most guitarists will probably want to play this piece using consecutive upstrokes/downstrokes where appropriate. I prefer to play it using alternate picking because I feel it creates a move even tone and also helps tremendously with pick coordination.

For those with small hands like me, measures 3 and 7 may be prone to some muffled notes (you can hear that in my recording...). It will take some practice to execute those measures without muffling the D string.

As usual, I recommend listening to other musicians' renditions of this piece. It might give you ideas you wouldn't have otherwise thought of. Rhapsody is a great way to explore music. Click here to get a free 14-day trial of Rhapsody

Later,

Brian