Imran Khan

Acoustic Guitar Virtuoso and Singer

Imran Khan is a musician - primarily an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist. Having been brought up on a wide range of music, a common description of Imran’s guitar playing is that ‘he makes the guitar sound like anything but a guitar’.

The Force theme from Star Wars

Screenshot 2023-05-11 at 11.16.27.jpg
Screenshot 2023-05-11 at 11.16.27.jpg

The Force theme from Star Wars

€2.50

Here’s a transcription of my arrangement of John William’s timeless theme from the original 1977 “Star Wars”, later renamed “Episode IV: A New Hope”.

A beautiful piece of music, starting off in a dark minor mood, before swelling to the hopeful major IV, giving it a delicious Dorian feel. Then it rises again to a glorious vi. I added a quote from “The Imperial March” which is commonly known as Darth Vader’s Theme. This shows both sides of the force.

My humble interpretation is 2 iterations of the theme. The first is almost an ‘Étude’ in natural harmonics. I use what I call the “harmonic scale” (nothing to do with harmonic minor) - all of the natural harmonics across 6 strings.

Note that each Natural Harmonic has an “N.H” above it, and the note heads are diamond-shaped. It’s a bit clunky but there’s no great way to show harmonics on notation or tablature.

Where the “harmonic scale” falls short e.g. to play a high A on the top E string, I make use of “Artificial Harmonics”, notated as A.H or a triangle-shaped note head. The write fret is fretted with the left hand while the right index finger touches the fret exactly 12 frets above, and the right hand thumb strikes the string.

The original piece is in the key of Gm, so I transcribed it into the guitar-friendly key of Em with a capo across the 3rd fret.
Enjoy, and may the force be with you.

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