Parkening Plays Bach

There were not too many Bach albums in our local record stores, however I did find one that changed my life. Hearing Christopher Parkening plays Bach on the classical guitar made me want to play classical guitar as well. 

My Dad bought us a nylon string guitar and a book of old time songs. He said that who ever learned to play it would have it as their own. I enjoyed working at it and learned from that book to play such folk songs as Sixteen Tons and House of the Rising Sun. I got the guitar but it was not in great shape by then and my Dad and Mum bought me another, better nylon string guitar and I went to the music store in Oshawa and got the excellent Folksinger's Guide to Classical Guitar. 

I was finally able to see Christopher Parkening in concert in Waterloo. My big sister Lynda Webster gifted me two tickets and I went to the concert with Eric Dennis after a brief and unexpected tour of beautiful downtown Breslau, Ontario. 

 Here is an excellent book for beginning to play classical guitar. It has the benefit of presenting the music in both tablature and standard music notation. Tablature is a very old and time honoured method of notating music by using each line of the staff to represent a different string of the guitar. It is a much more direct and visual display of the correct fretting and picking positions and is great for beginners:

Bach:  Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring

played by Christopher Parkening

Christopher Parkening plays 

J. S. Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze"