Play "Capricho Arabe" on Classical Guitar

"Capricho Arabe" opens with a free-form section that sets the mood. The first 12 measures contain a lot of techniques, including harmonics, repeated pull-offs, and a fast scale. Take your time to make sure the gestures are clear.

In the "resources" section of this lecture I have put the sheet music files. There are two files, one is written in both standard musical notation, and the other file is written in standard notation only.

This is where we jump into the main theme of "Capricho Arabe." This theme is repeated several times throughout the piece, so it's worth taking your time.

We'll keep going with the D minor section. The D minor section gets played a total of 3 times in the piece, 2 time at the beginning and then once again at the end, so if you get this down you're already close to half-way done learning the notes.

In this lecture we'll begin looking at the F Major section of "Capricho Arabe." The bright, upbeat music belies the difficulty in the left hand. The key of F Major is challenging on the guitar and it requires lots of barres and stretches in the left hand, so go slow and make sure you can all of the notes clear.

In this lecture we continue with the F Major section of "Capricho Arabe" and make our way up to the famous chromatic scale, which will get it's own lecture. Multiple students who have worked on the piece with me have said that this section is the most difficult part of the piece, even though it's not the flashiest. It may take time to develop the strength to hold down the left-hand barres for as long as indicated.

In this section we see how Tarrega uses a chromatic scale (a scale made up of all half-steps) to transition the piece to the key of D Major. Being precise about where to shift the left hand will help you get this scale into your fingers.

This lecture will cover the first 4 measures of the D Major section of "Capricho Arabe." This 4-measure phrase appears 3 times in the piece, so it's worth taking the time to get it sounding clear.

Here we'll take a look at the next phrase in the D Major section of "Capricho Arabe." It starts out the same as before but there is a fill with a lot of notes in the measure 43 with overlapping pull-offs.

We'll finish up the D Major section and go over the return back to main theme in D minor. Since this music is meant to sound romantic and expressive we'll look at fingerings that will deliver a beautiful sound, at the expense of efficiency.

This lecture will take you through the transition back to the main theme in D minor and the (short) ending. Most of this material is music that we have already covered, so the teaching will go a little quicker. It's a good opportunity to brush up on any material you want to review.

This lecture contains a performance of "Capricho Arabe" that you can use as a reference here in the course.

Congratulations, you made all the way through this great piece of music. You can re-watch any sections as many times as you would like to review any tricky spots. This is such a popular piece because it's so expressive and emotional. As you get more confident playing the notes, you can take your playing to the next level by putting more and more of your own personal expression in the music.