Playing the Lisbon Portuguese Guitarra by Ronald Louis Fernandez (continued)


Section 7. Basic Fado Arpeggios


The following exercises will prepare the reader for playing a fado style solo on guitarra. They were shown to me by Luis Penedo, President of the Academia do Fado e Guitarra Portuguesa, during a lesson at his Lisbon home in October of 1999.

The first exercise presents the basic fado arpeggio accompaniment. It is an alternating pattern using the index finger and thumb. It begins with the index finger playing free-stroke, the second note is played by the thumb--usually the thumb note is played rest-stroke.The pattern continues with this alternating pattern of index and thumb. Some players play free-strokes with the thumb, however, the rest-stroke really emphasizes the note. Play this pattern until you can do it unconsciously.

Next, we have a slight variation of the arpeggio accompaniment. In this exercise, the thumb plays the 4th string instead of the 5th string for the second note. All index stroke are upstrokes and all thumb strokes are down strokes

Next is an exercise using the trinado embellishment. In this exercise, up and down strokes are used by the index finger which is playing free-strokes.

And here is an alternative version.

The following exercise uses the chords d minor and A major seventh. It also shows the typical phrasing. See the first 3 notes? They are pick-up notes which are unaccented and lead us to the fourth note which is the first accented beat. That fourth note is the first beat of a measure and therefore it is typically accented. Notice the 5th beat in the same measure--it is also accented but it is less accented than the first beat of the measure. In this exercise the first full measure is based on the "d" minor chord (the tonic chord), then the second measure changes to A seventh (the dominant seventh), the third measure holds on to the A7, and then the 4th measure goes back to "d" minor. I have ended this exercise on the fifth count of the 4th full measure because that is where the typical phrase ends.The last three notes of the 4th measure (which are not written in) are the pick-up notes for the next phrase. I have written in the rhythm counts above in this exercise so you will know where you are in the rhythm.

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