In this guitar lesson we will look at another great classical guitar piece that adapts well to pick style guitar. The piece is Etude 1 by Heitor Villa Lobos and is a great guitar lesson for building alternate picking coordination and for building chord skills.
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So far we have gone over the first 11 measures of Heitor Villa Lobos's Etude 1. Based on those 11 measures, you probably wouldn't expect the piece to take the direction that it takes at measure 12. Namely, the piece suddenly breaks into a mesmerizing sounding series of chromatically descending diminished chords that culminate in a great sounding legato riff that preps the next section. What is so great about this section is the continual presence of open strings which adds nicely to the eerie dimished chords.
Above is the tab for measures 12-24. There is not much to it as all you are doing is shifting the same chord fingering down a half step each time. The end is somewhat tricky as it involves a good amount of precise position shifting. In fact, the end of this section is perhaps the toughest of the entire piece.