Tag: piano

The Stranger – piano intro arranged for guitar

I’ve been playing an arrangement of the intro to THE STRANGER by Billy Joel for quite some time now… as in decades. Normally I have some chords sprinkled in there but for this I’m just keeping it on the simpler side. It’s just bass notes and melody. The melody in the notation is pretty exact to the phrasing on the original recording. Do not let that bog you down. If you know how it goes in your head just feed off that. Don’t fuss over and scrutinize every 16th rest and dotted 8th note, etc. (unless you want to, of course). Paraphrasing is just fine – Lord knows I do. There is a link to a video below if you want to hear it and may want some extra guidance. There is also a link to the transcription in standard notation and tab. Hope you have some big fun with this!

THE STRANGER piano intro

Bridge Over Troubled Water Intro

I did a fingerstyle guitar arrangement of the piano intro to “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. The original is in Eb. I used a dropped D tuning (low E tuned a whole step down) and arranged it in D. If you want to do the record key just put a capo on the first fret and play everything up one fret.

This is basically a just a chord melody. Depending on how long you’ve been playing, some of the chord shapes along with melody notes may or may not be challenging to you. Squeezing piano parts out of the guitar is a great way to expand your musical thinking and fretboard vocabulary. As always, take your time and follow notion/tab closely. Click below for downloadable PDF. Scroll down for video.

Bridge Over Troubled Water Intro