At the time of buying my classical I had already some experience with the acoustic guitar. I thought it'd be fun to see what I could do with it. So, I looked up some pieces and started exploring them. One thing led to another and I'm now looking at the list of some of the most difficult songs to play on the classical guitar. I listened to each of them appreciating them one by one. ("Asturias" - Isaac Albeniz is one of them. I'm learning that too, but it's a tough one).

Recuerdos de la Alhambra was one of the difficult ones as suggested by this poll. After listening to a cover by John Williams, I was left with no words, only chills. I didn't know that it was possible to produce a sound like it using just one classical guitar! It sounded like magic!. The piece might have been the most beautiful piece I'd have ever listened to. I decided to say to myself - "How hard can it be?" and start the journey.

After 5 months, on March 2023, I was able to play the complete song from start to finish. My tremolo is far from perfect, but man! it's fun to play this. Here's my shot at it -

Pluck a string once and you get a short little note. Pluck it in rapid succession and the same note turns into a voice. A hauntingly beautiful, sustained voice that disguises itself as a melody. That's a tremolo - a technique that this piece relies on from the very start to the very end. Simple concept, yet hard to master.

About the piece

It was Francisco Tarregá's homage to Grenada's Palace of Alhambra. "Recuerdos de la Alhambra" is Spanish for "Memories of the Alhambra". The melodic tremolo has to be near perfect at all costs for the piece to work out. Tarregá doesn't hesitate to push the limits of a guitar player by imposing really difficult and unusual stretchy positions of the left hand, along with not limiting the tremolo to just the high E string. The tremolo will have to be played on the lower strings as well, sometimes even on the third string (D string)! it's played rapidly with the index, middle and ring fingers, while the thumb is mostly responsble for the bass line and the harmony. The piece starts off in A minor and before you know it, transcends to A major.

Yes, learning this piece is a difficult task. The left hand requires some hard stretches, the movements and transisions being considerably fast. There are a couple of bits where the tremolo will be accompanied by hammer-ons and pull-offs as well. Mastering the piece will be a mammoth task. But for the eerily calming feeling that this piece provokes, I think it's worth it.

As of the time of writing this post, I have lots of room for improvement. In fact, I belive that for pieces as beautiful as this, there's always going to be room for improvement.

How did I learn?

Youtube and ~some~ lots of free time.

While beginning to learn this piece, I ignored the tremolo part fully. Instead of playing the entire three plucks of the string after each thumb pluck, I played just one. This is how I was able to focus more on the left hand to get comfortable with the unusual chords and stretches that this piece involves.

Once that was done, it was time for tremolo. I had to be patient with the tremolo in the beginning since I was completely new to the technique. I had to start off really slow (around 60 Beats per minute) and get to a faster pace gradually.

While playing, I noticed that a large chunk of my attention goes into my right hand, while my left hand gets a little less. Since the tremolo goes on at a very rapid pace, the left hand transitions needed to be lighting fast for each of the notes to be heard properly and to not get muted by mistake. The right hand movements had to be steady and consistent for the tremolo to sound even.

Within two months, I'd have played the piece so many times - by the time I was finally able to make it sound decently good, it had probably turned into muscle memory.

I will not go into more technical details for now because there's a ton of resources on youtube that talk about it.

How did I record the audio?

With my smartphone mic (Oneplus 5). I played this in a somewhat empty room on a silent night. I also cut out the silent parts in the beginning and the end of the recording.

As they say, "The guitar is like a mini orchestra".

Cheers!