Reverie

This is a "journey" piece - a "going" piece.  Though the first part is a definitely "not-going-anywhere" piece.  You know how it is.  You make subtle changes as a means of not changing anything at all.  But in the second bit, you have to start the journey sometime.  And I wanted to try out a few ideas ...

This is on the new guitar (made in September) which I've had for two weeks now (this very new piece was partly written on this guitar).  Made by Ana Maria Espinoza Rodriguez.  She works out of Granada in Spain but this is a very contemporary sounding classical guitar.

And The River Runs

Two pieces.  The first, an anonymous Renaissance piece, is a standard of the classical guitar repertoire.  The second, based on a 13th Canticle ("Hymn To The Virgin") has had several more recent versions.  There's a Benjamin Britten version but this is my arrangement of a melody by Francis Duffy.

Pezzo Tedesco/Of One That Is So Fair And Bright

MY LONELY BLUE SUIT

I sold one of my two classical guitars in 2018 and bought a fabulous new one by a German luthier called Sacha Nowak. I then proceeded to compose a piece to see how far I could push the different voices of this new guitar (especially the treble). This piece is called "Simplicity" because it is driven by the melody, not by complex chord colours.

Simplicity

This is a piece which has, at its centre, an old Irish air “She Moved Through the Fair”.  There are two stories about this.  The first is that this was one of the songs dad used to sing at parties.  In Glasgow family parties, everyone was required to have a party piece and dad (“the voice”) more than most.  (Before you ask, my song was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”).  So this is a memory, a family thing.  The second story is about my Peter Barton classical guitar (used in this recording).  For 30+ years I used the Ramirez classical guitar.  Long scale length, powerful, achingly difficult to play with its high action, a bit unrefined in the top frets. But luthier techniques had changed over that period, and suddenly I was faced with a guitar (Barton) which could produce liquid notes on 12th fret.  My right hand was too powerful. I needed to develop a more sensitive tone. So I ended up having melodic conversations with the Barton, sometimes late into the night. This piece is what emerged.

SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR

A break from recording.  Recently I’ve been providing an arrangement to accompany a hymn “There is a longing ...” It’s such a beautiful piece and it really gets to me. You know what it’s like, a piece that you obsessively play all the time.  So, here it is.  No, it’s not for an album or any formal recording session.  It is what it is.

HYMN

I was experimenting with the sounds the guitar produced in a cavernous, empty church, unamplified.  Anyway.  In a matter of a day or so, this piece emerged.  If it had an instruction on the sheet music it would be “Play With A Bad Attitude”.  It's an uncertain piece and I’ve called it “Run That Past Me Again?”

RUN THAT PAST ME AGAIN?

All Passion Spent is more recognisable as a conventional blues.  With my foundations in classical guitar I’ve never been able to do free-flowing improvisation, so this piece is a finely practised non-improvised blues.  Running through the piece is a segue (which I develop and embellish).  I guess this is because I see the piece as a couple dancing, coming together and (segue) going into the next movement.  A friend of mine who is a dancer said that the segue is called a “chaine turn”.  Anyway, that’s what goes through my mind.  I realise the title might sound dark but of course the piece isn’t.  It’s a happy piece to play, simply abandoned to the moment, completely free of any trauma.


3. ALL PASSION SPENT

It’s 1976 and I’ve saved up the princely sum of £605.  I decide this freedom may never come again in my life, so I get on a train in Glasgow and (for the very first time) go down to London with my Yairi classical guitar to the Spanish Guitar Centre (founded by John Williams’ father Len Williams).  Yes, I spent the whole £605 and traded in my old guitar to buy a Ramirez 1a model guitar. That’s the back story.  While in London I felt as if I’d just come to the big city from the countryside – naive, open, surprised that no-one smiled or said hello.  while I slowly walked around with this inane grin on my face, in rapture with the new guitar. Years later I wrote this piece and the whole memory came rushing back.  So the title is “In The Big City.”  It’s the first of a trilogy of pieces. (In The Big City, The Getting of Wisdom and the already posted All Passion Spent).

1. IN THE BIG CITY

Contemporary/classical/blues instrumental guitarist.

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Alex O'Neil Guitar