Campanella: How To Use This Guitar Technique

Here’s a cool concept which I was mind-blown when I was first introduced to it – the Campanella guitar technique.

Mind-blowing because it opened up many possibilities to see and use the guitar differently, and also because it’s a counter-intuitive way of playing.

In Italian, Campanella translates to “little bell” and in the classical guitar world, it means playing scales with open strings in a way that makes a few notes resonate together. Sort of like playing tuned bells…

This way, a simple scale can sound like a harmony of vibrating notes. By using this technique, you’re exploiting the advantage of how the guitar is structured and tuned!

Here are 3 options to play Campanella over the G major scale in a descending way:

How to compose with the Campanella guitar technique?

It’s more than just playing a scale more interestingly… What I love to do is to compose melodies based on it.

For example, you can choose 3-6 notes that are based on this Campanella in G. Then play them over and over again, change the order of notes, add variations and expand it.

This simple improvisation-based composition formula just works. Try it! And share with me your result – I’d love to listen to it!

Hope this can help you with playing the guitar more creatively! Let me know if this helped in the comment below!

Also, you’re more than welcome to join my Solo Guitar Composition Artistry Group, where I share more tutorials and tips that help me with my improvisation and guitar composition.

PS
I have a PDF with this and other cool creative guitar lessons – comment below or send me an email to get it.