J.S.Bach on electric guitar. When I was a full-time music student, we were often given pieces of music to learn that were very challenging to play. Amongst the most demanding were the unaccompanied violin studies by J.S.Bach.

I had no background in playing repertoire like this (classical studies on guitar) and initially found these studies very difficult to learn. We were also encouraged to play these with a pick and as you will soon hear, this is quite a technical (as well as a musical) challenge!   

One of the violin studies that I eventually studied in detail was the Gigue in D Minor by J.S. Bach which I have posted below (full PDF available at foot of this article) 

The full piece runs to 11 pages, so learning it all is undoubtedly a major undertaking, but you might gain a lot from just examining the first page or so.  

From a technique standpoint, there are multiple ways you could finger music like this on guitar and I have added what I like to use in the tab stave. You may well wish to alter this however to suit your own playing style. Additionally, I usually try and play this type of music with an alternate picking technique but again you may find that you wish to explore different picking techniques.

Playing J.S.Bach on electric guitar is very challenging technically, but also extremely rewarding so I really encourage you to learn some (or all) of this wonderful composition. Enjoy!

Here is the full PDF with suggested tab fingerings: J.S.Bach – Gigue in D Minor PDF 

Here is an audio file (MIDI) on the entire piece: