FUNERAL MARCH (Main Theme) – Chopin – Easy Tutorial with TAB – Fingerstyle Guitar

Funeral March (Main Theme) performed by Robert Lunn

In this guitar lesson I teach you the opening theme of Frederic Chopin’s famous Funeral March (Marche Funebre). This melody comes from the third movement of Piano Sonata No.2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35.

I’ve always loved the music of Chopin. I love his Nocturnes, Etudes, and especially his Ballad’s. As guitarists, about the closest we have to Chopin is Tarrega, who I have always thought, but don’t have any proof, was influenced by Chopin.

A few years ago I made a group of easy arrangements for my students. This is one of those. I just arranged the opening theme from this movement. I hope you enjoy it. You can see more videos like this at my guitar school found at my website.

Improv and Funeral March Theme

I start this video off with an improvisation before playing my arrangement of a theme from Chopin’s second piano sonata. This particular arrangement comes from my second volume of easy arrangements available at my website.

So what do I think about while I improvise? Short answer is…not much. That’s the ideal–just let the music flow. The arrangement is in A minor so I figured I would improvise in A minor before going into the theme. Every now and then I’ll hit an unexpected note and the challenge is to make it fit. For example, around the 2:24ish mark I hit a C-sharp which I wasn’t planning on. The C-sharp would give the feeling of A major which is something I wasn’t looking to do. After I hit the C-sharp I decided to hit it again and then move down chromatically to the E. That’s the decision I made in the second or two after I hit that C-sharp. Little things like this are what I think about while I am improvising.

I am currently halfway through 20