Ferdinando Carulli on an electric guitar?

Hi there,

I was wondering...i have been practicing this piece (Andantino #4 - see tab http://www.guitartabsexplorer.com/carulli_ferdinando-tabs/andantino-tab.php) for a few days, and, although i know the piece by heart, note by note and i do not have too much trouble playing compositions like Bach's Bouret("Comin' Bach" as played by Ingwie Malmsteen), i...really am going thru a frustrating experience on this one :

First because i always get to pluck the wrong string somewhere somehow, and second, because practicing this piece over and over makes me unable to play my usual repertoire as efficiently as i was still used to few days ago, and i'm talking about pieces i have been playing for years without too much trouble....Ultimately it seems that i got new hands or that i need to learn my old riffs again, just like the feeling you get when you're walking after roller-blading for 6 hours in a row

So...is it safe to assume that i'm going thru all this trouble because this Andantino piece was written about 200 years ago and for guitars with different specifications, space bettween the string, etc...?

Did anyone ever come across the same feeling trying to play classical pieces on an electric guitar?

I am no classical guitar buff and don't know the piece at all but just thinking about your problem maybe standard tuning (which I totally assume you are using) is the problem. Could it be if you tune the guitar differently in e.g. any of the open tunings, with quints or quarts across the board, etc., that it might be easier to play this piece? You would need to retune it for your standard fair and of course you would need to figure out the fingerings but it might be worth a try. Sometimes there are pointers in the piece like droning note which are supposed to be open strings. So just try to look at the piece in a different way and try to figure out how you would be able to lay it out over the fretboard in an efficient way.

Hope this helps,

- Jos

I play a bit of classical guitar and it doesn't transfer to the electric very easily at all. The main reason for this, besides the sound, is the string spacing. The strings are much further apart on a classical guitar making hitting the wrong string 'harder'. My advice would be to buy a nylon stringer. This way, once you nail the piece, you'll be able to get the right voicing (ie picking by the bridge, with nails or flesh, the side-to-side vibrato etc) and it'll just sound better.

back then they picked with flesh only. today you'd pick with both flesh and nail at the same time. classical picking technique is nothing like finger picking on electric, like chicken picking, the direction the fingers move is different. the spacing on electric is way too narrow. but first you'd have to get the nail shape right, and your freestroke arpeggios right, before you can play this piece properly. that takes a little while. gotta go through the giuliani right hand studies to get those down. a common mistake for people to start with way to advanced classical pieces and play them poorly. if you practice it slow enough it will come. btw, what fingerings are you using? there is no indication n the tab, and the tab also doesn't tell you the note values you have to hold to even be able to know the fingerings. btw, playing bouret like malmsteen, and playing it well is 2 different things. to bring out the counterpoint voices properly is not an easy task. playing just the notes is not too tough. i would suggest seeking out a qualified classical teacher if you are interested in playing this type of music. we had 2 semesters of classes just on nail shaping and tone production. there is a lot that goes into it.
i may play more than just a bit of classical though.
jos, standard tuning is just fine for that piece. all it is just a few open chords in the left hand. the right hand is where it's at.

btw, i have never played this piece before and i can read through it at about 80% speed at first sight, from the tab, which is not something i do often. if you pay attention to the fingering and work on the right hand, it is quite doable even on electric. the skills required are so different, at first it will seem as you regular electric skills have diminished.

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for all your answers and advice, and sorry for the delay in replying...

Anyway Louis, the piece is doable, and i am playing it, although... the likelihood of making the wrong string ring ranges from narrow to very wide, this according to the way my guitar lies, the height of my sofa, so on...and above all, is virtually unpredictable

And yes, my regular skills on my electric guitar not only 'did diminish', they've really "plummeted" to an extent i really got frightened while i had only been playing this piece three days in a row. No piece ever damaged my regular play this way, which is why i've ended up creating this topic.

For what it's worth, i have started playing the guitar when i was 15, 21 years ago then, and i had started on a classical guitar, and always picked strings using my fingers, never using my nails, or otherwise incidentally. I then automatically and naturally purported this way of playing on my electric one every time the piece required it.

I am literally not against purchasing a classical nylon-string guitar, but now, i am not sure my neighbors would appreciate that, i usually rarely plug my amp when i play

Now, i guess that, if playing the debated piece on a classical guitar would allow me playing it right, it would deface my regular electric play all the same... So, somehow, i would have liked to close this topic mentioning a sentence i heard in Crossroads (1986), as it's probably the case here that 'one cannot worship two masters at once...'

Maybe this would just take time and dedication, but look at the way Yngwie Malmsteen literally defaces Bach's Bouret on stage live, i mean, that can only be the proof that as a player, one has to eventually make choices as to what kind of pieces to study.

Roland

But one more thing anyway that i think is worth writing : i have been learning 'Forbidden Games/ Spanish Romance' whatever you call it, a few weeks ago, and never had a single problem with the picking. Same thing with Bach's Bouret, so basically this piece from Carulli is the only one classical piece i have ever encountered that gives that sort of result on an electric guitar, strat type at least

Louis, one final thing : the more i got to pay attention to my left hand(i'm a lefty), the better the result was indeed, you're right, but also, the more 'defaced' my regular play was. I think i can confidently write that much.