The Martian Score Suite (found on the soundtrack) essentially has two movements: Making Water, and Crossing Mars. Both of those songs can found individually on The Martian score, by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.

As of this writing I haven’t seen the movie yet, but more than a few friends recommended that I play Crossing Mars for this blog. I had been listening to it — and loving it — so this was a great opportunity to create a compelling guitar arrangement. [I created a guitar arrangement for Making Water a couple of weeks ago — also from The Martian Score Suite.]

Crossing Mars is a stunning piece of music. As I learn these orchestral pieces, it occurs to me that I’m totally trapped in a certain type of thinking when I write music on guitar. Everything is in 4/4 or 3/4 timing — and my chord progressions are unremarkable.

On the other hand, a composer like Harry Gregson-Williams totally free, and writes music as if he has no limits on his imagination.

(Note: Crossing Mars is my premium material.)

How to play Crossing Mars for classical guitar

When I do go about arranging and orchestral piece of music for this blog — I usually take the opposite approach and play as little as possible. To this day I remain inspired and obsessed with Gustavo Santaolalla’s minimalist score for Brokeback Mountain. When I begin a transcription of this type, I usually think about what Santaolalla might do.

The guitar tab for Crossing Mars is a single page long. Your own ability considered — I view Crossing Mars as easy to play. There’s no difficult chord shapes to speak of, and that is by design. To have the output of material that I have on a week to week basis — it’s imperative that I make everything as easy to play as possible. I think it kinda sounds better that way too.

Enjoy, the guitar tab is available below. Crossing Mars is played in