Chichina I performed Chichina this blog about 7 years ago, however my audio quality was dated and not up to my current standard. I’ve been on a quest to redo the songs that inspire me to play guitar, and Gustavo Santaolalla’s Chichina is one of […]

Zambita Zambita is pretty tune by Gustavo Santaolalla from The Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack. Although it’s played on a lightly distorted electric guitar, Zambita also sounds great on any acoustic guitar. Like much of Gustavo Santaolalla’s film score work, Zambita is a fun, dynamic, and doable […]

La Muerte De La Poderosa I revisit The Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack often. The whole thing is a masterpiece. I love everything Gustavo Santaolalla does, but for me, the big two are: The Motorcycle Diaries and Brokeback Mountain. Gustavo Santaolalla’s work on The Motorcycle Diaries embodies […]

Dans Les Yeux De Bruno I’ve always loved this short guitar riff from Gustavo Santaolalla. It from a french film entitled, Les Yeux De Sa Mère. I’ve been working on a complex and long piece for this blog — so it was a good opportunity […]

La lettre de Ben I love this guitar theme from Gustavo Santaolalla. His music for the French crime thriller, Tout nous sépare (All That Divides Us), recently won ‘best score’ at the La Baule Film Festival. Gustavo Santaolalla’s creativity on a single guitar is off […]

Brokeback Mountain 1 Gustavo Santaolalla’s Brokeback Mountain 1 is my favorite piece of music ever. It informs, literally, all of my guitar playing. It’s the sole reason for this blog, and serves as a grounding principle for my musicality: minimalism. When in doubt, play less. […]

Amores Perros Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros (2001) is an ambitious story of lives that collide in a Mexico City car crash. Inventively structured as overlapping and intersecting narratives. Gustavo Santaolalla initially said no to this project, because he was too busy producing […]

Halloween Carpenter himself has been touring in support of his new album, Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998. In addition to directing, John Carpenter wrote and performed the music for most of his movies. He started with low budget horror films (Halloween 1978) where it was essential […]

Things We Lost in the Fire This is the second musical theme from, Things We Lost in the Fire: a (2007) drama starring Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro. The story follows (Berry) a recent widow and her husband’s drug addicted best friend (Del Toro). […]

Intrusion | Ma Mère Although composer, Gustavo Santaolalla is mostly known for Brokeback Mountain, and Babel (for which he won back-to-back Oscars) he has a ton of work out there from lesser known films. Les yeux de sa mère (His Mother’s Eyes) is a 2011 […]

Pajaros I have wanted to play Gustavo Santaolalla’s Pajaros for years, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t figure it out adequately until now. Pajaros (birds) is a one off song from the soundtrack of My Blueberry Nights. If you’ve never heard of that movie, it’s […]

[Updated 6/19/2020] This piece was revealed a few years ago for a potential Last of Us Part II menu screen. We now know it’s titled, Beyond Desolation. At the time of this writing, I’m pouring over the brand new Last of Us Part II score […]