guitar scores composed and/or arranged by skelterjohn
This project is maintained by skelterjohn
Many of the scores here are rendered using lilypond. The lilypond source files are available here.
This is a guitar orchestra piece, some obvious inspiration from Cancion y Danza.
score | score guitar 1 | score guitar 2 | score guitar 3 | score guitar 4 | recording
The first measure is a melody that has been stuck in my head for a long time. Perhaps from an anime theme song? Not sure. The piece is playable on one guitar but would probably be fun and sound nice with two.
A variation on Gulli Björnsson’s “Eroding Icy Shoreline”. It follows the original piece phrase by phrase, in a very different style.
This piece was written after a weekend of listening to various works by Erik Satie, but especially the Gymnopadies.
It is intended to evoke the feeling of quarantine during a pandemic. The repeated bars are not unpleasant, but a bit numbing (much like sitting in your house all day). There is searching (the first melodic section), hope (second), and even beauty (the C major section), but also anger and resignation (the F major section), but no matter what it all comes back to the numbness.
I like to play this one on my Seagull S6 Original (steel string acoustic dreadnought), which has a much brighter sound and long sustain compared to my classical (Alhambra 5P).
This piece is a guitar-ization of the song I like to sing to my children when reading You and Me and the Wishing Tree.
This is a study I wrote to help smooth out a section in Media Luna (long page, ctrl-f the title).
The first string is the melody, and its first use each measure should be loud and with vibrato. The second (and sometimes third) use of that string in each measure should be softer, sweeter, and (most importantly) regretful. It’s also full of big stretches for the left hand.
This piece is intended to invoke the feel of a Final Fantasy wistful flashback seen.
I watched Andrew York’s video on improvisation for guitar and put this together to help me practice chord inversions.
A simple piece with a repeating bass line. Has a few left-hand stretches but nothing too complicated. Perhaps best played as a meditation exersize at 2am.
A four-part arrangement.
score | score guitar 1 | score guitar 2 | score guitar 3 | score guitar 4
From the Trigun soundtrack. Transcribed by ear.
This piece was played during the procession at my wedding. So, I really like it.
Plays great on either classical or acoustic steel-string.
score | tab | recording from OST | my recording
From the Trigun soundtrack. Guitar/voice. Transcribed by ear.
I found numerous terrible tabs for this piece before I decided to just sit down and transcribe it myself from the mp3. I discovered that the tuning is quite unusual, with DAGDGD from 1 to 6, which likely accounts for all the poor arrangements I’d discovered. I believe what I transcribed below is faithful to what was actually played, and (as a bonus) it’s not that hard once the tuning is handled.
Best played on an acoustic steel-string guitar.
score | tab cheat sheet | composer’s recording
The original hand-written score for this piece can be found on Bert Alink’s site. The score here is a cleaned-up version.
Arranged by ear. You can visit the composer’s website and purchase the original score if you like. I made my score before the original was available.
score | my recording | composer’s recording
Arranged by ear. You can visit the composer’s website and purchase other scores, but (at this time) not Prelude No 2.
score | my recording | composer’s recording
I can also play things without composing or arranging them myself.
This piece is both beautiful and easily “under the fingers”.
score (long page, ctrl-f the title) | my recording
A friend described these pieces as “modern but not avant garde”. Gulli Björnsson is a talented young composer from Iceland currently studying in the United States. This “Landslög” suite has eleven movements, theoretically in increasing difficulty. The difficulty levels jump around quite a bit, but different things are difficult for different people.
I aim to eventually record all elevent pieces, though Landslög XI is quite challenging.
free score | my recordings as a playlist | composer’s recording