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 Introduction and Tune-up
I’ve always loved classical music and especially
classical guitar. While I’m not a true aficionado, I’ve always enjoyed
playing certain classical pieces. As a folkie fingerpicker, however, I
always felt a little impure playing them on my steel-string with my
plastic thumbpick securely in place. I loved playing them for myself,
but I was much too self-conscious to perform them for others,
especially after hearing countless classical guitarists perform them
with a musical sensitivity and ear for the repertoire I’ve never
attained.
Still, plinking out these classical melodies on my
phosphor-bronze strings continued to be a guilty pleasure of mine. I
eventually became tired of my hack renditions and began looking for
ways to bring a new voice to these pieces and make them my own. Rather
than approaching them with a strict attention to tradition, I decided
to apply the same approach I’d been using with Celtic and American folk
melodies for years and add some richness and depth by arranging them in
alternate tunings. I thought that trying to find a tuning that gave the
melody the most resonance and tunefulness would be perfect for the
classical music I’d been working on.
One of the pieces I had been playing was the
Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, in G major (BWV 1007).
Classical guitarists typically play this piece in D major, with the
opening phrase wrapped around a first-position D chord:
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When I played the piece this way, my rendition
sounded tinny to me, at least in comparison with the rich, resonant
versions I’d heard by classical guitar masters.
Whereas composing in alternate tunings often
begins with hunting and experimenting, arranging an unchangeable melody
begins by wrapping a tuning around the tune, so to speak. I decided to
find a tuning that would allow me to play the opening phrase with all
the notes on separate strings, so the melody notes could overlap and
ring into each other. This is an approach I use when arranging Irish
music, and since I had recently heard an excerpt of the Bach Cello
Suite performed on harp, the sound of the melody notes overlapping and
flowing was fresh in my mind.
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