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Bach Partita No. 3, Part 2

Mike Campese continues his take on an arrangement of a classical Bach piece

Hello Everyone! Welcome back! I appreciate the positive feedback from the last lesson. This lesson I will be showing you part 2 of the J.S. Bach Partita No. 3, hopefully you have part 1 completed and ready to move on. If not, keep working through it and be sure to strive for accuracy.

This section of this piece is really cool and can be challenging for your right hand, beginning at bar 17. For this whole next section I use alternate picking. Normally, this would be played using the fingerstyle approach on classical guitar, which would be a little easier for most people. But, I decided to make it more challenging by using alternate picking instead, without using your right hand fingers. What makes this tricky is the string skips, especially at higher tempos. This is a great right hand workout and it sounds really cool, especially when the open high E string is chiming all the way through.

Bach constructed some beautiful harmonies in this one, it would be a great exercise to a analyze the progression. I wont go in full detail, but for example bar 17 begins with E major, then Emaj7, Edom7, A major, Asus2, E, A major 7, A6 with no 3rd (or you could think of it as F#m7) and then to Eadd9, E, B sus4/F#, B add11/F#, etc. There is other ways you can interpret the progression, because you can base them off other roots, and some of these are not full chords. I leave it up to you to interpret this, though you might want to follow the fingerings provided.

Download lesson audio: Slow - Fast


Ok that is it! Be sure to let me know if you want more of this, I would be happy to do it. As always, visit me online at mikecampese.com.