Classical Music

Tango is Argentina’s best-known musical export. However, the traditional tango guitar style, which includes a specific set of techniques and concepts, is virtually unknown outside of Argentina. Adam Tully fell in love with this particular way of playing nylon-string guitar and spent almost 30 years studying it, eventually moving from his native New York to Buenos Aires, where the tango scene, and tango on six strings, is stronger than ever. And although many classical guitarists have studied and performed the repertoire of Astor Piazzolla, that music in a way is tango, and in a way isn’t. In this article Adam Tully describes what tango guitar is, and how we can learn to play it.