Good Bach Pieces For Learning
 

Hi guys could u point me in some Bach transcriptions to play on my acoustic guitar that would help me improve. I am not a bigginer yet I'm wouldn't consider myself a competent guitar player and never play in standard tuning. (I can't) I just never felt comfortable learning standard tuning.

I play the piano and I love playing Bach Pieces such as preludes and fugues and some of Busonis Bach organ transcriptions. Playing these pieces really helped develop my composing skills and I'd love to try the same process with guitar.

I hear pieces such as Jesu and they really are beautiful on guitar. This piece is probably way to advanced for me. I will need to look at some clips. My picking hand is well ahead of my left hand. My left hand can be quite lazy finding certain shapes awkward.

I'd love some suggestions from some players of Bach of a few to look at.

What tunings do you play in? Seems like learning standard tuning would greatly broaden the scope of transcriptions available for you to play.

A good beginner Bach piece is Minuet in G

Tab: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab..._g_tabs_189404

Bourree in E minor is another old favourite, maybe a little trickier:

Tab: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/189037

This was the one that Paul McCartney and George Harrison learned (at least in part) as teenagers, and was the inspiration for Paul's Blackbird, and probably (more indirectly) Yesterday too.

Oh yes; sorry, but you have to learn standard tuning! Seriously, bite the bullet and get down to it. There are players who find other tunings more comfortable and stick with them (such as DADGAD or EADGCF) - and two or three geniuses who invented a whole raft of bizarre alternatives (Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake). But you will then have your work cut out transposing pieces like this to your chosen tuning. You will be in your own little ghetto.
Alternative tunings are great, but it's a mistake IMO to get stuck in any one. Just as I would never suggest anyone get stuck with EADGBE!

I second that.
I have a lot of Bach transcriptions for guitar, and almost all of them are in standard or drop D tuning.
You may find the odd alternative tuning for one of his popular pieces (like the Prelude from the 1st Cello suite), but considering your background, it would be
well worth your time and effort to get familiar with standard and drop D tunings.
As far as easy pieces go, there really are none with Bach. As you must know, there is a lot going on musically in his works, even in the "elementary" pieces (like from the Anna Magdalena compilation. Come to think of it, that would be a good place to start.)

Here's a selection (Bach, plus Couperin, Rameau, etc) from good ol' Mel Bay:

https://www.melbay.com/Products/3063...ue-guitar.aspx

Thanks for these suggestions. AHH Couperin I remember learning one of his pieces on piano. Les bariccades mysterious or something. It was hard! Lots of annoying tied notes. IL have a look see if it's the same one. I remember hearing a guitar version.

Oh boy standard tuning. I sound like I'm learning the violin. I don't like it ☹️

If you know where the notes are on the fingerboard in your preferred tuning, it shouldn't matter. You're not playing guitar music. You should be able to work up any piece you want from the sheet music. IMSLP has all the Bach you can stand in PDF format.

If you're looking for TABs or somebody else's guitar arrangements, That's another story.

.

You never did mention the tuning you like to play guitar in.
If you don't have a favorite, you might want to experiment with:
C G D G A E
A mix of the open string tunings on the cello, viola and violin, for which Bach music should be a plenty. Might be worth a shot, or at least be a starting point for experimentation and more easy fingerings. (I have no idea if it would work or not).
I still think you should just "get over the hump" with E A D G B E, or
D A D G B E, especially if you plan on playing more guitar. :)

Must it be Bach? I always thought it should be Bach, but when I started making more transcriptions (some of them on IMSLP, but all in standard tuning) I discovered Händel, Corelli or Telemann translated pretty well to guitar too.

What really helped me with composing and arranging was making my own transcriptions, so you could do those in the tuning your guitar has. Fugues may be a bit to hard, but other contrapuntal pieces might be interesting. I found Händel's minuets good to start with.

If you need a refresher on counterpoint, I can recommend Seth Monahan's videos on Youtube.

BTW. I find fugues difficult because the melodic lines should be copies and that's hard to do on an instrument where lines can never be completely independent. Let alone where fugues have more than 2 voices. But maybe that says more about me than about the fugues.