{"id":141845,"date":"2023-11-10T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=141845"},"modified":"2023-11-08T16:36:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T00:36:50","slug":"ralph-towner-revisits-the-oregon-classic-guitarra-picante-on-solo-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/ralph-towner-revisits-the-oregon-classic-guitarra-picante-on-solo-guitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Ralph Towner Revisits the Oregon Classic \u201cGuitarra Picante\u201d on Solo Guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Many of the songs published in AG <\/em>are built from just a handful of chords, but glance through this transcription of Ralph Towner<\/a>\u2019s \u201cGuitarra Picante\u201d and you\u2019ll find a whopping nearly three dozen different chord symbols.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towner first recorded the composition with his band Oregon on the 1991 album Always, Never, and Forever<\/a><\/em>, and AG <\/em>published the notation that same year. (See the January\/February 1991 issue<\/a>.) On his most recent album, At First Light<\/a><\/em>, Towner revisits \u201cGuitarra Picante\u201d in a solo guitar setting, and this transcription is based on that new recording. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While steel-string guitarists tend to roll chords of four or more notes, Towner, who primarily plays the nylon-string, uses a classical fingerstyle technique to sound all the voices simultaneously. \u201cThis effect mimics the attack of a horn section as well as gives a pianistic sound to the delivery,\u201d he wrote in the performance notes to AG<\/em>\u2019s earlier transcription. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGuitarra Picante\u201d features a bunch of five-note chords, requiring the highest voice to be picked with the pinky, a bit louder than the lower members. \u201cA good gauge or test of the quality of tone produced by your little finger is to match it with the tone of your other fingers, Towner wrote. \u201cTry to develop each finger so its sound equals the others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the new recording, Towner plays through the form once, shown here in full, then improvises on it through several passes. The unusual chords provide many interesting melodic possibilities. For instance, over the B7 alt seen in measures 8 and 23\u201334, Towner wrote that using \u201can eight-tone scale beginning on any natural note, including all the notes of the C major scale plus a G#, suits the chord rather well.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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