guitar by judd niemann

My arrangement of "Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum" ======================================== Lately, I have been getting into some early 20th Century "Classical" music. I have always liked the music of Claude Debussy, whose sense of harmony often has a close resemblance to jazz, and other "modern" music. This song is the first movement of Debussy's "Children's Corner", a suite which is an evocation of early childhood, dedicated to Debussy's 3-year old daughter, Claude-Emma (known as "Chou-Chou". Sadly, she died of Diptheria at the age of 13 - not long after her father's death). This piece is normally played on Piano, and is a moderately difficult piece to play on that instrument. On guitar, I found some of the passages to be murderously difficult, since passages which are natural to play on piano are not necessarily easy to play on guitar. In fact, I hadn't really heard anyone play it on guitar until I heard Paul Galbraith play it on 8-string guitar, which inspired me to try it myself. For this arrangement, I used two guitars - the melody and chords are played on my "jazz" guitar (7-string archtop) and the bass lines were played on my "death metal" guitar (7-string LTD baritone). (If I perform this live, I will either do a solo arrangement with a few compromises to make it playable on a single guitar, or I will do it as a duet with a bass player. I would love to play this on a 7- or 8-string classical guitar but, sadly, I don't own one of those !) I spent a LOT of time practicing this, but I learned a lot from it. Thanks to my long-suffering wife and kids for putting up with me practicing the same passages over and over again ! PS - I recommend that you check out some other versions of this piece. Paul Galbraith plays it flawlessly on his CD. Bela Fleck also has a superb version for Banjo and Cello. And, of course, there are lots of different piano interpretations on Youtube - some outstanding, some not-so-good :-)