Dionisio Aguado is considered as one of the greatest guitarists of the 19th century. Aguado composed a large body of works for the guitar and his 'New Guitar Method' is a popular book today. Although much of his writings were done in languages other than English, this method book is a rare exception. The book was published in London c. 1836.
A large focus of this book is to improve the facility of reading notes on the guitar - something that I think many guitarists of today wish to improve! |
Preface
Aguado points out the difficulty of reading notes on the guitar, particularly when those notes are located past the 5th fret. Aguado says this difficulty is due to students not learning the doctrine of 'Equisonants' or 'Synonymous sounds'.
Have you ever thought about the number of different semitones the guitar has? On a guitar that Aguado was using (with 17 frets), there were only 42 different semitones! On a modern guitar there are about 50. But guess how many possible notes you can play on the guitar, including repetitions of notes (equisonants)? On a guitar with 17 frets, there are 108 different notes and on a modern guitar there are 116.
This shows why practicing your fretboard harmony is so important and Aguado's method contains some truly enlightening resources for doing this.
Have you ever thought about the number of different semitones the guitar has? On a guitar that Aguado was using (with 17 frets), there were only 42 different semitones! On a modern guitar there are about 50. But guess how many possible notes you can play on the guitar, including repetitions of notes (equisonants)? On a guitar with 17 frets, there are 108 different notes and on a modern guitar there are 116.
This shows why practicing your fretboard harmony is so important and Aguado's method contains some truly enlightening resources for doing this.
Table of Equisonants
The following table is extremely valuable and something I've never come across before in any other method book. It's a table that shows all of the notes on the guitar, but it tells you where the same sounding notes are located in different places on the fretboard. So if you want to know all the various ways to play an E (the pitch equivalent to the first open string), then you can quickly locate them all by using this chart.
Intervals
This section of the book is extremely useful. Here, Aguado shows you the fingerings for each common interval. Each interval has a fingering pattern that can be repeated up and down the fretboard and/or across the fretboard.
Lessons
The remainder of the method contains short lessons that have specific purposes, including positions, fingerings. ornaments, harmonics and barring. Each lesson contains a very detailed description of what the pupil ought to work on. Below is the first lesson found in the method.