Reddit reviews 30 Easy Spanish Guitar Solos

I bet you'd like this book. It has Romanza in it, and a bunch of other Spanish pieces. I'm not sure any of the pieces would be described as "romantic", but then that is really an aesthetic judgement I'm not qualified to make. Maybe you'd like some of the tangos. There are other iconic pieces like Lagrima and Malaguenia. One of the first books I bought and still my favorite by far.

You're not going to get a lot of people in r/classicalGuitar that are going to answer this without some kind of recommendation that you just improve your regular score reading skills instead. Tab can be a great tool at times, but more often it seems to be used as crutch.

My advice is to start sight reading as much as you can whenever you find tab-free scores because it is skill that you can only develop with dedicated and focused practice. Whenever you go to the effort to transcribe a score to Tab, you are still leaning on a crutch because when you start playing, you aren't using the music, you're using your Tab instead and not actually getting any score reading practice in. In your mind, you are probably translating your scores to Tab instead of actually reading the score. Tab and score notation are similar in that respect. In fact, I suspect that if you just force yourself to give up tab you'll see an amazing and very rapid increase in your ability to process standard scores.

Here is a personal example: When I read Spanish I am not actually reading Spanish... I'm translating it into something I am familiar with. I still have to learn to transform my thought process into Spanish before I am truly reading Spanish. Once I stop communicating by saying buenos noches to mean "good afternoon/night" and I just start saying buenos noches when I mean "buenos noches", I am actually speaking Spanish. Until then, I am just translating words. That won't change until I immerse myself in Spanish without clinging to English as my crutch. The same thing applies to changing from Tab notation to score notation.

http://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333574358&sr=8-1

I have this book and it is great practice in sight reading and you may want to check it out. It is nothing more than a bunch of short sight reading exercises. Teach yourself one or two of them a day without transcribing them to tab first and I am absolutely confident that your reading skills will improve noticeably.

If you are really insistent on using Tab though, classtab.org is decent.

This book has some decent stuff in it as well: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Guitar-Solos-Book/dp/1603780599/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333575720&sr=1-1

This is an easy set of spanish-style songs. It includes a CD for reference.

I believe your tunings are incorrect; OppoKomn described things correctly. You should not try to tune the G string on your guitalele up an octave; you would instead need to get new strings, but I recommend against this. It is best to treat the guitalele when playing as a guitar with a capo on the fifth fret; the sound will be ukulele-esque, but the playing mechanics on your end will be pretty much guitar.

Many ukulele songs can be played by just using the chord diagrams and tabs in your ukulele books and using the four highest pitched strings on your guitalele. Sometimes your chord will sound a little off. (In the standard uke tuning, the GCE strings, barred at any fret, give a major chord with root on the C string, but your guitalele will give an inverted major chord, same root..I think. This will mostly sound okay.) I play a lot of uke music on my guitar, just by putting on a capo and doing this; I expect your guitalele will sound even better.

Also, you can just play guitar tab straight out on your guitalele. Everything will be transposed up a fourth, but it will sound fine. It's not what you had in mind, but a lot of Spanish and Mexican guitar music sounds great on these smaller instruments (I have the half-size Yamaha classical guitar, not much larger than the guitalele). The book 30 Easy Spanish Guitar Solos arr. by Mark Phillips is a good place to start (it has tab, and is relatively cheap).