How To Choose The Proper Sheet Music For You
Choosing the sheet music that suits you best is a process that involves your personal taste along with other factors that come into play.
Your Personal Taste
The first and foremost thing you should consider is your taste. Obviously if you're a Vivaldi fan, or you love spanish guitar, then this should be the first factor in your list of considerations.
No guitarist will want to learn something that he/she doesn't feel excited about. So the material you pick should at least spark some curiosity in you.
Expand Your Horizons
Having said this, it is important to note that you should try to broaden your horizons as often as possible. You may be in love with a piece such as Asturias, but playing only that piece will actually take away from your enjoyment of the instrument.
It's like eating your favorite food. You love it and you say to yourself that "I could eat this every day for the rest of my life with no problems." But what happens when you get the chance to do just that? In 99.9% of cases, if you're eating the same food morning, noon and night every day you will start to get sick of it... to the point where you will actually feel a sense of nausea when you see that food again.
Same goes for sheet music when you stay on just one piece or one style (spanish guitar for example). So expanding your horizons is necessary.
But expanding your horizons is also good because by learning to play another style (let's say baroque) or other composer, you get to experience guitar from a different point of view. Vivaldi will not sound like Asturias, and so on. This can only make you grow as a guitarist.
Your Level
Your playing level is another thing that you should strongly take into consideration.
One of the biggest problems that I encounter with students is their fixation on a certain piece that is just too difficult for them. They don't want to play anything else but THAT piece.
This is a destructive habit that leads to frustration. One way of explaining this is by using an analogy:
Imagine that you are a bodybuilding fan and you want to become the next Schwarzenegger. You go to the gym and head for the bench press, load 300 pounds on it and try to lift it.
The only result you can expect from such an approach would be a visit to the hospital.
So many guitar students apply the same approach when picking their sheet music and end up wondering why things don't seem to work.
It's not that the piece you like is impossible, after all it must have been played by some guitarist before, but you've chosen the wrong approach to it. You need a gradual approach. And just like in our muscle building analogy above, you need to take things step by step in order to get to your destination.
So buy pieces that are doable for you and serve as a stepping stone in the direction of that virtuoso piece you love so much. You can go for material that is a bit challenging, but don't over-reach.
The Exercise Part
Methods and studies (such as Giuliani's 120 Studies For The Right Hand) are essential to growth. Don't just play pieces. You need to focus on technique too.
You'll notice that almost every athlete (even golfers) will hit the weights room on a regular basis. They understand the need to keep themselves in shape and work out their muscles in order to perform better in their sport.
So why is it that most students neglect to do something similar? The only want to play pieces. They neglect the "muscle building" that a method or specific guitar studies can give them.
Balance this aspect when choosing your sheet music.
Expand Your Repertoire
It is a well known fact that a guitar player studying and learning 40 pieces per year will be miles ahead of a guitarist that spends his time playing the same old piece.
This is because learning more material makes you more experienced. In the end the guitarist that expands his repertoire will know a piece better than a guitarist that learns just that particular piece.
Seems counter-intuitive that one should spend a year pounding away at a piece and play it poorly when compared to a guitarist that spent his year learning 40 pieces including that one piece. But this is the truth.
So it's important to build your library of sheet music. You need to be able to keep yourself interested and expand as an artist. A poor library of sheet music will usually mean much less progress...