Lágrima by Francisco Tárrega is one of the most popular pieces in the intermediate classical guitar repertoire. Here, you'll find practical guidance on left-and-right hand fundamentals, tips for the most challenging sections, a recommended practice plan, and beautifully-engraved Performance and TAB scores available to download.
Although the score appears simple, many students discover that Lágrima's beauty masks significant challenges. Partial barre chords in high positions, stretches, and large position shifts make it difficult to maintain a connected, legato melody. With so much of your energy spent finding the notes, the balance and phrasing often suffer.
This guide is designed to help you solve those problems at their source. By understanding subtleties such as proper right-hand strokes, minute changes in your hand and wrist position, and the proper use of large muscle groups, you can reduce tension, increase accuracy, and improve your musicality.
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Overview
Lágrima
by Francisco Tárrega
Level: 4/10, Early Intermediate | Date & Era: 1891, Late Romantic |
Key(s): E major, E minor | Form: Ternary (ABA) |
Positions Used: I-IX | Duration: ~1:45 |
Lágrima
by Francisco Tárrega
Level: 4/10, Early Intermediate | Date & Era: 1891, Late Romantic |
Key(s): E major, E minor | Form: Ternary (ABA) |
Positions Used: I-IX | Duration: ~1:45 |
About Me
For over 20 years, I’ve taught guitar in my private studio and on the faculty at Swarthmore College, helping students from absolute beginners to advanced players grow in technique, musicianship, and confidence.
The Basics
Right Hand Basics
One of the biggest musical challenges in Lágrima is balance: many students can play the notes, but the melody does not sing clearly above the accompaniment.
“Balance” can sound like an advanced musical skill — something to worry about only after all the notes are secure. But in Lágrima, much of that work begins with a single technical choice: using the correct stroke. In fact, a large part of the piece’s basic balance can be improved simply by learning to use what I call the Pinch Stroke.
The Pinch Stroke is my term for a simultaneous free stroke in the thumb and rest stroke in the finger, named for the pinch-like motion used to play it.
Once you begin using this stroke, the melody can come forward much more naturally. The fuller, richer sound of the rest stroke helps bring out the melodic line without requiring so much conscious effort to control the balance of every note.
For a simple exercise that will help you develop the Pinch Stroke, read the full article.
Left Hand Basics
Chord Shapes
One of the most important steps in learning any new skill is developing the ability to chunk information. When you first learn a new arpeggio pattern or chord, each individual movement competes for space in your limited short-term memory. As you become more fluent, however, you begin to group several pieces of information together and treat them as a single unit. This frees up mental bandwidth for other tasks.
Chords are one of the clearest examples of this. A beginner may feel overwhelmed by the number of fingers, frets, and strings involved in a B7 chord. An advanced guitarist, by contrast, can hold much more in mind at once: the chord itself, the chords most likely to follow it, the keys in which it commonly appears, the different places and shapes in which it can be played on the fretboard, and the way its name changes when the same shape is moved.
Although classical guitar often uses only fragments of these chords, we constantly draw on the same basic chord shapes found in “campfire guitar”. Learning to recognize when these shapes are used can dramatically speed up your learning. Instead of memorizing each note as an isolated event, you begin to recognize familiar shapes and can chunk entire measures at once.
As you learn Lágrima, I strongly recommend warming up by strumming these chords and keeping the chart nearby. As you play through the piece, look for places where fragments of these chords and shapes appear. The measures in which they occur are listed below.
Common Chords and Chord Shapes
Because guitar chord shapes are movable, some of the diagrams below are labeled as shapes when they have been shifted up the fretboard. I have not included fingerings in the chart, since partial use of a chord often calls for different fingering choices, and adding them here could create more confusion than clarity.
B7 | B7 & B7 Shape | A minor Shape | E Major | E major Shape, Barred | D7 | E minor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
mm. 2, 4, 15 | mm. 6, 7, 9 | m. 6 | m. 8 | mm. 7, 12 | m. 15 | m. 15, 16 |
B7 | B7 & B7 Shape | A minor Shape |
|---|---|---|
mm. 2, 4, 15 | mm. 6, 7, 9 | m. 6 |
E Major | E major Shape, Barred | D7 |
|---|---|---|
m. 8 | mm. 7, 12 | m. 15 |
E minor |
|---|
m. 15, 16 |
Guide Fingers
One essential skill for learning guitar more quickly is learning to recognize and use common fingers. A common finger is a finger that can remain in place while the other fingers move. Keeping a finger down whenever possible helps stabilize the hand, improve finger independence, and create better legato between chord changes.
A simple example of a common finger in Lágrima appears in measure 15, where the third finger can remain down between beats 2 and 3.
The most important kind of common finger in Lágrima is the guide finger. A guide finger is a finger that is shared across a position shift. As you move to the new position, keep that finger in light contact with the string. This contact creates a reference point that helps guide the hand accurately into place.
Lágrima makes frequent use of guide fingers, especially in measures 1–2, 3–4, and 13–15.
Even when a shift does not contain a shared finger, it can sometimes be stabilized with a transitional guide finger. A transitional guide finger is a finger that serves as a guide during the shift even though it belongs to only one of the two shapes. In practice, this means either placing an otherwise unused finger down before the shift, or allowing a finger used only in the first shape to remain in contact slightly longer as the shift takes place.
This can greatly improve left-hand accuracy and stability. Transitional guide fingers are often most useful as a technical aid during the learning process; as your fluency and accuracy improve, you may need them less.
In Lágrima, transitional guide fingers can be especially helpful in measures 5, 7, and 9.
These days, it's easy to find a copy of an early edition of Lágrima. In fact, you can see his handwritten score at the top of this page!
The observant student will notice that there are a few places where modern player almost never use Tárrega's fingering. This is because he played with the stings available at the time, which were made out of animal intestine. The high E was prone to breaking with too many shifts. Thus, Tárrega likely avoided 1st string guide fingers to prolong the life of his strings.
He also did not contend with the squeeks from wound bass stings, leading modern players to change some fingerings to avoid those issuse as well.
Helicopter Fingers
Guide fingers are incredibly helpful, but on some strings they can create an unwanted side effect. If you shift with a guide finger on one of the wound bass strings, the finger may produce an unpleasant scratching or squeaking sound. To avoid that, you need to learn to use helicopter fingers.
When shifting, many students lift their fingers like an airplane: the finger begins moving sideways at the same time that it lifts off the string. Because the finger stays in contact with the string during part of the shift, it often creates a squeak. Students often “land” the same way as well, producing a second noise as the finger comes back down.
The solution is to practice shifting with helicopter fingers. A helicopter takes off vertically, moves across, and then lands vertically. Your fingers should do the same: lift straight up, shift to the new position, and then come straight down. Separating the movement in this way helps eliminate unwanted squeaks.
Measures 1, 3, and 13 of Lágrima are ideal places to develop this skill. In these shifts, the hand is stabilized by the fourth-finger guide finger, which lets you focus on the helicopter-finger motion itself rather than worrying about stability and accuracy.
The Hard Parts
m. 5 High Barre Chords
The half-barre in measure 5 often becomes tense because students try to solve it by squeezing harder with the thumb and index finger. While that may seem to work in the moment, it tends to tense the entire hand, reducing finger mobility and making it harder to move smoothly into the next chord.
A better solution is to use less “clamp” pressure and more support from the larger muscles of the arm and shoulder, especially in higher positions where the usual feeling of arm weight is reduced. This creates a more stable barre while leaving the hand freer for legato playing and accurate shifting.
For a fuller explanation, see the Measure 5 High-Position Partial Barre Lesson.
m. 11 Stretch
The famous stretch in measure 11 is not difficult simply because the notes are far apart. The real problem is that many students reach the high E, then lose legato when they have to return to the A on the fourth string. The passage becomes much easier when 1) using the full stretching capacity of the entire hand and 2) shifting into the correct position. A better hand position, a stable first-finger pivot, and a clear plan for releasing the stretch can make the phrase feel much smoother and more secure. For the full breakdown, see the stretch lesson on measure 11.
Smaller Challenges
m. 6-7: Campanella Fingerings
This section is conceptually, but not physically difficult. The arpeggio in beats 2-3 can be arrived at by using a guide finger. The chord shape is an incredibly common one (see chart above); students are often confused because the notes look like it should be a simple pima arpeggio, but, due to the open string, it is actually paim.
Transitioning into the next measure is done via another guide finger. Again, looking at the music can be confusing due to open strings which are a higher pitch than the fretted note.
This technique, while confusing to look at, does produce a nice resonance. In fact, the technique predates the guitar; it originated with the lute. This technique and the effect it has is called campanalla.
As mentioned before, the transition back to I position can be accomplished using a guide finger.
m. 12: The Barred Slur
Of course, you must have a solid 3-4 ascending slur (hammer on) for this to work well. Ensure that you are using large muscle groups to play your barre, or else your pinky will be very tense. Place the thumb slightly closer to the pinky to help support it's hammer-on.
m. 10 Thirds
I've fingered this to minimize string squeak; my fingering is slightly more challenging than other common fingerings, but I think it's worth the effort. It also provides a transitional guide finger for the transition into the next measure.
Practice Plan
I assume 5 days of practice per week. All times listed are the amount of time I want you to spend repeating the exercise or music. Early on in the learning process, you will likely spend more time figuring things out. I assume 5 days of practice per week.
Week 1: Prep Week
15-20 mins
One of the best ways to begin learning a new piece is to spend a week or two preparing its fundamentals and most difficult passages before making it the main focus of your practice. In fact, the ideal time to begin a new piece is when you are about 80% of the way through your current repertoire piece. At that point, you are still mentally and emotionally engaged with the old piece, but you also have enough space to begin laying the groundwork for the next one.
This approach gives you time to work through and understand the hardest sections of the new piece (Lágrima, in this case) before you try a play-through. By the time you shift your main attention to the new piece, those difficult spots will already feel familiar and manageable rather than being major stumbling blocks. That makes the overall learning process smoother and helps prevent the frustration and burnout that can happen when the easy parts feel comfortable but the hard parts still lag far behind.
For your first week of practice, focus on The Basics and The Hard Bits.Get a timer and keep yourself honest. Some of this stuff just requires a lot of repetition.
- 45 seconds each day practicing The Pinch with a timer.
- 2–3 minutes playing through the chords listed in the table above
- 2–3 minutes each on the measure 5 high-position barre chords and the measure 11 stretch.
- 1–2 minutes on each of the smaller challenges listed under The Hard Bits.
- If rest-stroke scales are not yet comfortable for you, add 3–4 minutes of rest-stroke scale practice as well.
Week 2: Integration
20-30 mins
Once you've gotten comfortable with those tasks individually, start integrating the hard parts in with what is around it. As you do this, keep a keen eye out and try to find the chords and chord shapes you practiced last week. 2-3 mins each on:
- m. 5 to the G on the upbeat (the "and) to m. 7, beat 1.
- This combines the High Barre Chords and Campanella sections.
- m. 7, beat 2 to end of m. 8
- A section cadence (closing chords)
- A section cadence (closing chords)
- m. 10 Thirds to m. 11, beat 2
- Transitioning from thirds into the stretch
- m. 11-m. 12 ascending slur
- Transitioning out of the stretch and into the barre chord, with slur
- m. 15-16
- B section cadence
Additionally, spend 1-2 minutes playing. As always, look for chord shapes and chord shape fragments to speed your learning:
- m. 1-4
- Guide fingers from the outset. As your familiarity increases, begin to use helicopter fingers in the bass
- m. 9
- m.13-14
- As above for guide fingers and helicopter fingers
Week 3: Full Phrases
20-30 mins.
Spend 5 minutes playing each phrase. As your comfort increases through the week, pay attention to legato.
- m. 1-4
- m. 5-8
- m. 9-12
- m. 13-16
Towards the end of the week, begin to combine 1 and 2, as well as 3 and 4. Try a complete play-through on your last practice day of the week.
Week 4: Playthrough and Basic Musicality
20-30 mins
Spend the first two-thirds of your practice time playing through the individual phrases listed in Week 3. Your main focus should still be legato, but this week you should begin paying close attention to balance as well. Although your use of rest stroke will do much of the work for you, listen carefully and make sure that the notes with stems pointing upward (often, but not always, this denotes melody. It does in this score) consistently come through clearly.
Most students find balance harder to judge accurately than they expect. For that reason, I often encourage students to exaggerate the melody at first. In many cases, what feels exaggerated in practice is actually much closer to the right balance in performance.
Final Thoughts
Although Lágrima is short, it asks for a great deal of control, awareness, and sensitivity. If you take the time to prepare its core techniques carefully — legato, balance, shifting, and left-hand organization — you will not only learn this piece more successfully, but also build skills that will carry into many other works in the classical guitar repertoire. Work patiently, listen closely, and enjoy the process of turning a small piece into a truly beautiful performance.
