There are places that stay with you long after you leave. For me, Sestri Levante is one of them. I was staying in a small hotel called Miramare, which means "looking out to sea" in Italian, and from my window I could watch the Mediterranean stretch out in every direction. The light, the rhythm of the waves, the particular stillness of those mornings: all of it worked its way into a guitar idea before I even sat down to think about composing.
That idea became Miramare, one of my most personal original pieces for solo guitar.
Watch the performance
Before anything else, here is a live performance so you can hear the piece in full:
I always find it useful to listen to a piece a few times before opening the score. It tells you where the music wants to breathe, which passages carry the most weight, and what the overall shape feels like.
What the piece is about
Miramare is built around a single, simple motive: a melody alternating with open strings. It sounds almost effortless on the surface, but that simplicity is deliberate. The open strings act as a kind of shimmer underneath the melody, the way sunlight moves on water. The whole piece grows outward from that one idea, layering new textures and harmonics while always returning to the same quiet heartbeat.
The wave is the central image throughout. I wrote every section with a rise and fall in mind, tempo and volume swelling and retreating like the sea. Playing it well means breathing with the phrases rather than rushing through them. Each pair of bars has its own arc.
What the score contains
The score is 3 pages, 56 bars, written in E major. It is presented in both standard notation and tablature, so you can work from whichever you prefer or use both together. The key of E major suits the guitar beautifully here: the open strings that ring throughout the piece are all natural to that key, which is exactly why the texture sounds the way it does.
What you will work on
Miramare is a good fit for intermediate to advanced players who want to develop expressive playing and unconventional technique. It is not overwhelming, but it will stretch you in specific ways.
Thumb-led melody on the bass strings. The main melody begins on the D string and shifts to the A string in bar 8, which is unusual in guitar writing. I play it with the thumb using apoyando (rest stroke), so the melody carries weight and clarity even while the open strings ring alongside it. Once you develop this, it transfers to a huge amount of repertoire.
Wave dynamics. Every phrase has a built-in arc: softer and slightly slower at the start, building through the middle, then relaxing back. Learning to shape this consistently and naturally is one of the most valuable things you can develop as a guitarist, and this piece gives you a clear, musical reason to work on it.
Harmonics combined with fretted notes. This is where the piece becomes genuinely challenging. In bars 15 and 16 there is a passage where natural harmonics, right-hand pinch harmonics, and fretted notes all have to happen simultaneously. The 7th-fret harmonic on the low E string while holding the 11th fret of the high E string, for example, demands both precision and a particular way of anchoring the hand with the pinky. I walk through the exact fingering in the score, but it takes patient, slow practice. The effect when it clicks is worth every repetition.
Letting notes ring into each other. The bridge section (bars 17 onward) is built on overlapping arpeggiated chords. The goal is not to play them as block chords but to let the notes shimmer together, each one sustaining into the next. This is more about approach than technique, but it produces a completely different sound once you find it.
Get the score
The full score, including fingerings and performance notes for the harmonic technique, is available for download in my shop for €9.99:
www.karlijnlangendijk.com/product/miramare/
It comes as a PDF so you can download it immediately and print it at whatever size works for you.
A note on making it your own
One thing I wrote in the score notes, and genuinely mean: if you find a fingering that works better for your hands, use it. Miramare grew out of following what I heard in my imagination, even when it made the guitar part harder. That is the spirit I hope you bring to learning it too. The goal is not a perfect reproduction but a version of the piece that lives in your hands.
The sea I looked out at when I wrote this will not be the same sea you imagine when you play it. That is as it should be.
The Miramare score is available as an instant PDF download for €9.99. If you enjoy the piece, subscribing to my YouTube channel is the best way to stay up to date with new compositions and arrangements.
