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Jonathan Leathwood, classical guitar
Nothing much here at the moment, but here are some score-reading exercises for guitarists. Not a course in score-reading, just a taste. The exercises may not look very clear on screen, but should print at a fairly high resolution.
The files are all in PDF format, and quite small – between 10 and 40 K. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader 4 or higher to open them.
[Download the latest version of the Acrobat Reader]
All these pieces are conceived to be played on the guitar as they are written, at an intermediate level of difficulty. Sometimes the expansion into score format creates unisons between instruments: in these cases, don’t try to duplicate the note on different strings – let one note on one string stand for all.
Note that all parts are to be played at pitch. When the treble clef is used, as in exercises 6a, 7 and 8, you will have to play the part an octave higher than in conventional guitar notation.
Exercises 6–8 are Sor pieces masquerading as string trios or quartets. To help complete the illusion, I’ve added bowing marks, which should not be interpreted as left-hand slurs on the guitar.
1 [one line, alto clef]
2 [one line, tenor clef]
3 [one line, tenor clef]
4 [one line, bass then tenor clef]
5 [two lines, alto and bass clefs]
6a [string trio]
6b [same as 6a, but scored for viola and two cellos]
7 [string trio]
8 [string quartet]
Here is a larger PDF file containing all eight exercises together (13 pages, 168 K):
Alternatively, here is a stuffed folder containing all the files listed above (256 K). Open with Stuffit Expander, WinZip or some other decompression program.