Boléro (Maurice Ravel)


About

Many people seem to consider this as “adult movie” soundtrack theme. Rubbish. I think it is one of the most magical melodies ever written, even though Maurice Ravel himself did not seem to like his own work very much: “I have only made one masterpiece - unfortunately it doesn't contain any music” (quote, translated freely from the German Wikipedia).

 

Original Key

C

 

Tuning

Regular

 

Tab Notes

Don't worry. I will not go through the entire 15 minutes of the piece with all the modulations, key changes and full orchestration (I would of course if I was able to). I just wrote down the main theme and the second movement and then picking one motif that halfway acceptably leads back to the basic key.

I transposed it to A to be able to play the ostinato bass on the open strings close to as it should be. Whenever it is too hard to play the correct A - e - E, I cheat and do A - E - E.

Fingering is almost entirely from the fourth position, except for the 2nd bar of the main theme variation, where it slides up to the 9th fret briefly.

 

Final Note: If this is too amateur for you, Songsterr has the Sungha Jung tab in CGCgbe tuning. Is there anything this little genius cannot do ?


Download
Bolero_v2.pdf
Adobe Acrobat Dokument 591.9 KB