Thanks, James. I'm not talented enough to do my own arrangements, though sometimes I'll make minor modifications or combine aspects of two or more arrangements I like into one. For example, there are two arrangements of Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier that I really like, and so I sort of merged them into one, which was easy because they were in the same key. I couldn't retain everything I liked because the approaches were so different, but as I continue to work with it maybe I'll figure out ways to do so.

I wonder if anyone has tried to arrange Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach on an Alto? That is a notoriously difficult piece to arrange for a six string guitar, but maybe it would lay more naturally on an Alto. Rick Foster's arrangement is exquisite, but it's virtually unplayable! Per-Olov Kindgren did a pretty nice job making a do-able version for guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NISKdxuKQfs

~Sean

Sean,
You will find,"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", in the downloads of this forum. I based it on Mira Hess' piano arrangement, which in turn she based on Bach's original orchestral score. The double bass octaves are there in the score, but can be reduced to just the lower note without serious loss. It is quite playable.
I have looked at "Sheep may safely graze", but in my first pass at the piece, I could not find a key that seemed to work. I will eventually have another look at this very charming piece.
James.

Altophile wrote:

QUOTE:
Beautiful performance and guitar! On the one hand I noticed that you didn't need to use rest strokes with your thumb, which makes this piece a good one for my repertoire, but on the other hand it's a bit demanding on the left hand! It reminded me a little bit of Rick Foster's arrangement of Joy of Man's Desiring, which Christopher Parkening has described as one of the most difficult pieces in all of guitar repertoire, because you really have to move across the fret-board into some precise positions.

I'll save that one for a period when I have more time to practice:-)

~Sean

Actually, now that I've watched the video again the piece doesn't look that difficult. It definitely seems to be in the upper range of intermediate in difficulty, but I wasn't correct to compare it to Rick Foster's Jesu, which is impossible for me.

~Sean

tenvec wrote:

QUOTE:
Sean,
You will find,"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", in the downloads of this forum. I based it on Mira Hess' piano arrangement, which in turn she based on Bach's original orchestral score. The double bass octaves are there in the score, but can be reduced to just the lower note without serious loss. It is quite playable.
I have looked at "Sheep may safely graze", but in my first pass at the piece, I could not find a key that seemed to work. I will eventually have another look at this very charming piece.
James.

I've been looking at your arrangement of Jesu, and while I haven't worked through it yet, I like it! One of my problems with so many of the stripped down versions is that they sacrifice too many notes to make the piece playable on the guitar, but yours is rich and full. Right now I play David Qualey's modernized version, which isn't difficult at all but fun because of his style of playing, but I might just add yours to my repertoire as well

Good work!

~Sean