song: Spiegel im Spiegel
artist: Blake Mills
performance: Live from Here – with Chris Thile (30th of May 2020)
writer: Arvo Pärt (1978)

nylon-stringed classical guitar + fretless electric guitars: Blake Mills

This is a transcription of Blake Mills’s beautiful guitar part. This is a guitar arrangement of the piano part on this chamber music classic. Hear Blake Mills and Chris Thile talk about his performance on the artists Instagram interview before the show. Enjoy!

This composition has 3 instrumental parts:

1. The leading melody part is the 17 long phrases that structure the composition. They all begin at different notes in the F Major scale, but all arrive on the same note (that alto A). As the composition progresses, the phrases expand in length from being 4 to 11 bars long.

2. The harmony part is the calm ascending 3-note arpeggios. They follow the melody in register, as the top note is always identical to the current melody note. Likewise, these arrive on the same arpeggio (that F triad in 2nd inversion).

3. The ornamental part is the unpredictable notes that come in halfway through the bars, like a call-response function to the melody notes. These notes are all from the F chord, and alternate between a high and a low line.