Learning a guitarist's style through his music

Question

I'm wanting to learn Estas Tonne's guitar style. He is a mix of gypsy, classical, and flamenco guitar. I've listened to quite a bit of his music but am having hard time finding any tabs on his music (a lot of improvisation and difficult guitar parts can explain why)

Thus, my problem is that I'm having a hard time transcribing his music. His songs are rather complex for a transcription beginner like me.

What are some things I can do to help pick up his style? Should I maybe venture into flamenco and gypsy music some more? Should I sit down and play around while listening to his music to grab his essence?

Note: I know the technical ability is not difficult for me, it's just learning how to pick up his decision making in composing and improvisation.

Answer 1

If a guitarist has a mix of several playing styles, I am afraid that you will not be able to learn this as if it were one composite style. Rather, it would be good practice to learn all these styles, and then try to understand how he combines them, so that you can mimic this.

This sounds like an extreme lot of work, but your understanding of these styles doesn't need to be overly extensive, unless you're really aiming for professional quality playing yourself. When you have basic skill in each of these styles, you'll be able to see which elements of which style he uses, how he uses them and how the whole thing fits together. From there you can really start learning to play like Estas Tonne does.

Answer 2

I would suggest loading sections of his music into a looper and then looping it at half-speed or quarter-speed while you try to play along.

Answer 3

What I found is that many of the things Estas does are not too difficult and actually quite achievable for any mediocre guitar player. the magic comes with how it is put together. I never took classical lessons, playing since 5 years, and I realized that I can play his style.

I am doing a full transcription of the Song of the Golden Dragon (Landshut 2011) and I got about 2:30 done right now. I included fingering notation to give help with right hand technique. If you are interested in my tab just send me an email: dashannes at gmail com

I am doing it in guitar pro (standard notation + tab) and generally add the pdf as well.