Bach, "Fugue BWV 998"

Johannes Sebastian Bach a man I sincerely believe is now in the Glorious Presence of God, in other words a Saint. I have this intimate certainty that Johannes is receiving all the glory that a man of his total dedication to live according to his faith deserves. 

The Green and Orange Dotted lines indicate the lane of the left hand knuckles. The color indicates how much or how little the left hand knuckles are parallel to the strings. Typically I shift the color of the dotted lines from Green to Orange to Red.

I offer an alternative transcription for some staffs. Click the Orange Button underneath the staff -where it says Click Here for Version 2-.  You will see that it flows better and the musical sacrifice was minimal, actually I believe that the musical sacrifice is not doing more.    In the example above you will see I changed fingers 3 for finger 2 and finger 2 for finger 1. The reason is that this change will force you to relax the left hand. This is something which is crucial and more essential to the safe continuation of the execution of the Fugue. It cannot be stressed enough how crucial fingering is to making guitar music sound beautiful. I am not exaggerating it is ESSENTIAL. The guitar can be defined as the "transcription Instrument per excellence". Its root and it success in the music world has be conquered one one transcription after the next. Guitar players can become masters in transcribing and therefore in Fingering. The only time we fail is when we forget the limitations of the instrument and neglecting its weaknesses is ignoring it many assets.    Deciding which notes will stay on the score must be your first decision and you must weight all the possible factors and scenarios available. It is always preferable to play a note or more less in a chord than trying to play all the written notes only to sound sloppy and very probably making a mistake. The mistake was actually conceived in your fingering stage of the work.    Other valid instances can be the type of guitar you use. For instance when Andres Segovia played his Hauser, with the tremendous 3rd string he used to arrange pieces to exploit this asset. When he passed to the Ramirez, he would leave the 3rd alone more often and changed fingering accordingly.   You will see me use the word RELAX throughout the work. In those instances you must release all tension from the body or you will not sound well or even make lots of mistakes. When your body asks to tense up, do the opposite, RELAX. Read all about relaxations HERE>>