Week 1
Attention all tonebuddies! Are you ready to embark on a journey of musical creativity and exploration? Join our Arrangement & Transcription Challenge and discover the joy of reimagining music for the classical guitar!
Over the next four weeks, we’ll celebrate the art of transforming works from other instruments, ensembles, or even genres into stunning guitar performances. From Albéniz and Granados to Piazzolla, Bach, Scarlatti, or even your own favorite songs — everything goes!
🎯 Whether you choose to:
Work on a well-known transcription (Albéniz’s Asturias, Granados’s Danza Española, Piazzolla’s Libertango)
Create your own arrangement from scratch
Compare different versions and share your insights
…this is your chance to dive deep into the creative process and share your journey with the tonebase community.
This challenge is open to all levels — from curious beginners discovering their first transcription to experienced players refining their own arrangements. Let’s celebrate the versatility and expressive power of the guitar together!
📅 Challenge Dates
Start: November 11
End: December 11
👉 Join anytime by introducing your project in the comments below!
💡 How to Participate
Pick your piece – Choose an arrangement or transcription that excites you.
Share your goal – Are you learning, arranging, or refining?
Post your progress – Upload short clips, notes, or reflections as you go.
Engage – Encourage others, ask questions, and exchange arranging tips!
🎥 Watch Party Reminder
The Watch Party on December 11 will feature recorded submissions from this challenge!
So make sure to submit your final performance videos and showcase your creative work!
23 replies
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Nice Challenge! Working on an arrangement of a Piazzolla Tango.
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Indeed an interesting challenge... I have a few ideas... lets read a few things before committing!
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I've been working on Francisco Luis' lesson on Decdicatoria by Granados. Hopefully I can have something to submit before the end of week 1.
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I am a curious beginner and have a few ideas. I'd like to arrange the church hymn 'Nearer my god to thee' and the piece 'La sera sper il lag' composed for four part choir.
Perhaps I get one of them done...
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hi Martin, could you urgently check your mail. I've sent you an email requesting help with a membership issue. Sorry for posting something off topic here.
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This provides a nice incentive (and deadline) to finish an arrangement of Chick Corea's "Spain" with the little introductory nod to Concierto De Aranjuez. I'll post something in a couple of weeks.
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Here's my week 1 video. I'm doing Dedicatoria by Granados. I could be mistaken but i think the arrangement is by Francisco Luís (EDIT: I was wrong. This is Llobet's arrangement). I got it from the this tonebase course:
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Thank you Martin. I really like this challenge. I tuned down the 6th string to C#, printed out the piano score of Rachmaninov´s prelude in c# minor (op. 3 no. 2) and see how I can transform it into something for guitar. For me it’s really the process that matters, not the end result.
I’ve wanted to learn this piece for a while. I really like Edith Pageaud’s version on YouTube, and it was actually one of the things that motivated me to start playing classical music on guitar. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find sheet music for her arrangement. This challenge finally pushed me to try coming up with my own version (instead of transcribing Edith´s) And honestly, aside from deciphering the bass clef and all those ledger lines, it’s been fun.
Here’s how I’ve approached it so far:
First I just try to play the melody and the bass notes. Then I add some notes of the inner voicing. Basically focusing on the part of the score the pianist’s right hand plays.
In the score I cross out most of the notes that are just octave doublings in the lower register.
I analyze the chords that result from both hands at the piano (e.g., C#, G# dom7, etc.). That helps me find possible alternative voicings on the guitar.
Then I try to play this reduced material on the guitar and keep the two inner voices under the melody as close to the original as possible (e.g., keeping a first inversion triad when that’s what the piano does).
When something just doesn’t work on the guitar, I look for alternatives and mentally note them. For example, in bar 6: let the bass notes ring long and simplify the harmony, or keep the bass short so I can get that cool minor 2nd (major 7th + octave) that defines the chord. Or bars 11–14: play the melody low like the original but sacrifice a lot of harmonic information, or move everything up an octave.
Listen to piano performances and re-evaluate steps 1–5.
On the first page this actually works surprisingly well.
And then the Agitato section arrives… and with it, despair. It becomes way more technically demanding, and I can’t experiment with different guitar options nearly as fast as I can on the earlier parts.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions for how to approach this?
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I'm still noodling with a couple of things for this, and I'm not sure what's going to work out. I'm messing with some Renaissance pieces, a prelude by Jose Antonio Donostia that I first heard on a Sharon Isbin album, and for something completely different for me, a couple of Brouwer transcriptions/arrangements, lol.
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Thank you! Nice challenge again. We’ve been here before and many great pieces came up. Very inspiring . I’m looking forward to this. Maybe I’ll try a piece as well. I’ll go over my old repertoire, because I’m now mostly focusing on original guitar compositions by non guitarist composers….
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I am working this month on Astor Piazzolla's tango. Calambre arranged for guitar by Agustin Carlevaro. The piece is in three short sections. Here is Section I.