Explorations for Fingerstyle Guitar

On this DVD I have collected some tunes that have one thing in common- are all a regular part of my performance repertoire. Some, like The Sleeping Tune, La Que'teux Trembley and Sandizan have been staples of my live work for many years and some, like Kalyana and Le Tourment, are more recent additions. All of these are tunes that speak to me as a musician- loudly enough that I'd want to arrange them for solo guitar and as such they are not exercises or technical studies. They are destinations, goals set with musical value in and of themselves. These arrangements involve the techniques I have been using for years to articulate traditional tunes and while some of these are new compositions they are all within the traditional idiom.

In this collection we'll use the well-known DADGAD tuning, hopefully showing why it's so popular in Celtic and traditional music. We will also use CGCGCD or C Sus2 tuning for some of the tunes. This tuning gives rise to some beautiful chord voicings that suit the essence of this music. We will look at triplets with ring middle and index fingers, my thumb technique for playing triplets on the wound strings and many other ways of bringing the guitar to this music in an authentic way.

These are not pieces for beginners but neither should they be out of the reach of an intermediate player with a bit of dedication to bringing these pieces to life." -Tony McManus

A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. Each tune is taught phrase by phrase and played slowly on a split-screen.


115 minutes, Level 3, Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD.  DVD is region 0, playable worldwide.