a_arnold -> question about PdL transcriptions (Aug. 25 2011 2:56:06)
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I've been listening to PdL's La Plazuela (1971, "Recital de Guitarra") also on youtube, with the hope of learning it. So I got a tab/notation transcription of it (1976, published under his name) and discovered that the fingering is not only absolutely impossible, it also isn't written as he played it. Here's the weird thing. The recording is clearly in the "normal" bulerias key of A phrygian modulating to Am at the end (capo on 2), but the transcription is transposed to a totally different key, which renders the fingering impossible. I'm a good guitarist, and a competent judge of what can and what can't be done on a guitar. And I say this transcription can't be played. By anyone. Is it possible that this was done with the intent of discouraging people from learning PdL's repertoire? Certainly it would be discouraging to anyone who believed that he actually played it the way it is fingered. Clearly there is no need for PdL to undercut the competition in that way, but flamencos are notoriously protective of their compositions, so I wonder. Alternatively, PdL might have hired a non-guitarist (say, a pianist) to transcribe it from a recording to regular notation, and they did so without taking the capo into account, and then a classical guitarist wrote out the tab from the notation, doing the best job they could to finger it as written without a capo. That would make sense, as the tablature is fingered to play the notes in the key of B on open strings that PdL played using A phrygian hand positions with capo on second fret. Bottom line, neither version is useable. The tablature is nonsensical, and when I read notation, I instinctively read .as though it were written for guitar without capo. I can't transpose from B to A in my head. So -- does anybody know of a version of Plazuela that is actually written the way he plays it? In fact, does anyone here actually play Plazuela? I think, with some work, it is within my technical abilities, but it would be a lot of work to learn it from just listening to the recording. Help! Tony
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