In Homage to Julian Bream, Konrad Ragossnig and Narciso Yepes

• The goal of guitar168.com and Edition Leyenda is to promote many beautiful and pleasant guitar pieces that are not readily available elsewhere and to advocate multi-string guitars (e.g. 10-string guitar). Edition Leyenda provides many music pieces suitable for multi-string guitars. New files will be added frequently. Please visit us regularly.

   

• For Renaissance pieces, the 3rd string is usually lowered to f#. Capo on the 3rd fret is suggested to play the original pitch. If you have a 10-string guitar, you can tune it to: e,b,f#,d,A,E,D,C,B,A than apply the claw-type capo to the first 6 or 7 strings (I can't find any capo for all 10 strings), then adjust the other strings, so the tuning of the guitar becomes g,d,a,f,C,G,F,Eb,D.C; suitable for most Renaissance lute (6,7.8 or 10 courses) music (photo). Also this tuning is similar to Goren Sollscher's Altgitarren tuning. Of course, it's also possible to use 2 capos on each sides to be applied to all the strings. For Baroque music, capo is usually not  needed and the guitar can be tuned e,b,g,d,A,E,D,C,B,A, while the bass-string tuning can be adjusted according to the need. For some of the music of Weiss, it's convenient to have some of the bass strings tuned in F and/or G. I believe the most practical (though unconventional) way will be the use of a short capo (such as the Kyser 3-string capo) over the 8th fret of the lowest 2 strings (A and B).

   

• The music is set in modern notation and tab with Tabledit software (www.tabledit.com). It is easy and convenient but has limitation to create multiple voices notation. The TEFview software will allow you to view and print the Tabledit files and it's free to download (www.tabledit.com/tefview). I think the modern tab is suitable for aspiring students for Renaissance lute who are frustrated with the old French tablature system.

• Edition Leyenda tries to be practical and thus is not intended to be academic or scholarly. Open string is used liberally.  Most of the left hand fingerings should be obvious for intermediate-level players.

• Edition Leyenda was inspired by three great players:
  • Julian Bream and Konrad Ragossinig are my favorite guitarist-lutenists. Their recordings of the Renaissance lute music are still refreshing and I prefer them over many modern players and recordings.
  •  Narciso Yepes was an innovative pioneer of the modern 10-string guitar. Many guitarists of the old generation (including Segovia) were sarcastic about the multi-string guitar, but Yepes simply remained undaunted in campaigning for its cause. Nowadays, many players (including this one) are accepting and adopting multi-string guitars.

   

• It's obviously advantageous to have a 10-string guitar since it can be used for music for 7 or 8-string instrument.

       ---Leyenda