Learning the 5th etude of Carcassi op60
I watch masterclass with Pepe Romero. The player decided to play the 7th etude of op60. Romero said:
“This study, the Carcassi, were completely essential in my learning how to play”.
After I heard it and thinking that I always somehow return to those etudes, maybe I should study this opus. The first 4 were fine. They weren’t easy, and they had their hard part. But, this 5th is a real pain.
Especially these 4 bars:
Those 4 measures are played on the 7th fret with bar. The key is G. The hard chord is the chord that opens the second bar: C4, F#4, D5 where the D5 is the melody so you can’t remove it. Also, you can’t remove the C4 because there is a move from B to C, the same is with F#4 a move from G to F#.
To add to the complexity is the dynamics up and down and again up and down.
The way I tried to learn it is to put a metronome on a slow tempo, the time signature of 4/4 (I know that the piece is 2/4) and multiply the note length by 4. So, almost all the notes are quarter bits. In this way you keep a very simple tempo — note per bit, except the 1/8 note become a half meaning two bits. The 1/16 becomes the quarter.
I get why Romero said its good learning. You have these complex parts. But on the other side the piece is very beautiful. When you pass this obstacle, you can get the trophy of a nice piece.
