Francisco Tárrega played an important role in the development of the modern guitar repertoire.In addition to transcribing many pieces from piano literature, he composed a number of important works that are still popular on the concert stage.

Ask the student for beautiful tone atall times. This piece lends itself very nicely to the concept of “4 ways” practice.

4 Ways Practice

This approach to practice requires the student to isolate specific elements from a piece. After mastering each element the student will find improvement in the finished product.The “4 Ways” approach asks the student to:

• Practice the upper melodic line by itself, including all fingering, phrasing and dynamic contrast

• Practice the lower (bass) line by itself (including all fingering, etc)

• Practice the right hand alone, playing the open strings, paying special attention to fingering and dynamic contrast

• Practice the left hand alone (silently, except for slurs) with attention to fingering, shifts, and perfect placement of fingertips behind the frets

After the student practices each element of a section (usually 1 or 2 measures long) ask the student to play the reassembled passage.

“4 Ways” style of practice works well with almost any piece, but pieces with sustained multiple voices benefit greatly from this approach.