La Muerta del Angel Tango Lesson Piazzolla
This guitar lesson shows you how to learn the awesome La Muerta del Angel (Death of the Angel)by Astor Piazzola. It has a series of videos that will walk you through how to practice & effectively perform each section of this piece. Giving fingering tips, any hacks, and many more insights into learning this Argentinian Tango.
La Muerta del Angel by Astor Piazzola
This is Tango was originally part of a four-piece suite “The Angel Series“, which was based on a play by Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz. It was completed in 1965, it is based on the story of an Angel that tries to heal and help humanity, only to be killed in a knife fight (a feature of Piazzolla’s music). The suite has 4 movements:
Click on the last three links to see Astor live, in concert, absolutely slaying these pieces.
Learn Piazzolla’s La Muerta del Angel Tango (Section A)
This first section of La Muerte del Angel needs to be in tempo, crisp, and punchy. You are going to learn the opening riff, along with help on nailing that 2 octave scale with two different fingerings. There is the usual advice on how to practice pieces, along with a short lesson at the end on how to perform the pizzicato technique you need in this section.
La Muerta del Angel (Section A) Next Chunk
The second section continues here with lots of new elements, a walking bass line, chord stabs, and poly rhythms. We also have the vestiges of Piazzolla’s eduction in Paris with Nadia Boulanger: chromatic movement. This adds to the tension, and helps complete this section, and is the perfect foil for the B section.
B Section Chords & Scales
Piazzolla opens this section with big, lush chords, followed by quasi-improvised runs. There is room for some adjustment to the chords, as this is an arrangement. So do not be scared to alter notes to make it easier to grip the chords. I use a lot of open strings to shift through those scale figures, but they are open to adjusting to your style of playing guitar. Experiment with them to find your preferred placement.
Get Roland Dyen’s Humorous Take on The Tango
Need more Tango?
Grab your copy of the amazing short and quick modern tango from Roland Dyens below. Fully tabbed out, so there is no guess work to where your fingers need to go, along with all the left-hand hacks and guides you need to perform this piece confidently.
Death of The Angel (Section B) Continues
There are lots of runs, in this next part of La Muerta del Angel, along with a series idea. The ending to this section is slightly challenging, and it is possible to nix some notes out of those chords, use the rule of taking out the octave.
Ending Piazzola’s Tango
The ending is fun, loud and has lots of brash rasqueados to it. The arrangement calls for extra variations to be added to the Tango stabs. Watch those last two chord shapes, they need a little stretch added to the barre.
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