"The Entertainer" Transcription for Guitar

         

"The Entertainer" subtitled "A Rag Time Two Step" (a popular early 20th

century N. American dance and style of music common among rags) was 

completed in 1902 by the African-American composer Scott Joplin (1867-1917).
He wrote several ragtime piano compositions or "rags" (his most famous being
"Maple Leaf Rag"), operas, ballets, marches and waltzes. Ragtime preceded
Jazz which would become the dominant popular music in the U.S. by 1917.

It has an A B A C D structure or four 16 measure segments of music. Syncopation 

(a basic characteristic of this style of music) is omnipresent.

The piece became famous in 1973 with the release of the multiple Oscar winning  

film The Sting ("The Entertainer" was featured as the theme music and the 

soundtrack won an Oscar).

It was originally composed for piano in C (remember the piano was the main  

instrument of Ragtime) and there are countless transcriptions for many different 

instruments and instrumentations. Here's my arrangement for guitar in the key of G
with some right and left hand fingerings.