PLAYING TIPS

[General] This fantastic prelude is technically not too difficult to play so long as you work on it with intelligent fingering. As you can see the motif or pattern is the same for every bar; the first two beats have a held chord played in an arpeggio pattern and the third beat has two descending quaver bass notes with a repeated upper note following each one. There are some technical difficulties occurring on this third beat so we will look at how to get around some tricky moments. [Bar 1] In bar 1 follow the picking hand fingering exactly. This fingering remains the same throughout, even when the bass notes occur on the third stringG, InMtAhGeAfiZrsINt b4a8rs I like to let go of the first finger (fretting hand) half way through the second beBatAaCsiHtgi-vePs ‘space’ for the hand to nicely reach the bass notes. [Bar 3] Keep the second and fourth fingers in place throughout bars 3 and 4. [Bar 5] Bars 5 and 6 require a little fretting hand hop from 4th to 3rd position on the last beat so make sure your second finger is hovering during the first two beats ready to catch the Bb on the shift. [Bar 7] We reach the Dm chord and the fretting hand’s second and fourth fingers can stay in place for four bars with the first and third fingers working around them. A first fret barre will be needed for the first two beats of bar 9. [Bar 10] The G#dim7 chord at bar 10 is a bit stretchy and at bar 11 I let go of the first finger half way through the second beat to get it ready for the G# on

beat.