Gorgeous playing and production. Love it David.

Evolving music. One of my favourite things. This is beautiful, David. I'm glad you were inspired to learn to play like this all those years ago.

Just lovely. I aspire to be this good. :)

Simply beautiful, fingerstyle is not a skill I possess and I stand in awe of those that can.

Beautiful piece David, love your guitar playing mate.

We welcome your feedback!

Composed, produced & performed by Srouly Frank

Impro

℗ © Copyright Ian Stokes. All Rights Reserved
Recorded and mixed using Logic. Mastered in Soundcloud
Photography: Thanks go to Nigel and Libby Hume at Hume Photography.

This acoustic guitar instrumental is played in DADGAD tuning (all tuned down a half step)using my Taylor 714 CE guitar.

The Chase

Fingerstyle playing has been a passion for me for over 45 years, having fallen in love with it when I first heard a college friend play with his fingers instead of a pick.  It was mesmerizing and I determined then and there I must learn how.  This song is the first I wrote using fingerstyle and has followed me around now for over 40 years evolving as I learned more playing technique.  I think it is still evolving, but this is where it is now; shades of light and shadow, good times, difficult times, hopefully full of the Grace of God. It is a musical portrait of me.  Performance note:  only one guitar used, the Taylor JKSM, standard tuning, no overdubbing--strictly solo fingerstyle.

Places I've Been

As the old Soviet joke goes, “In the Soviet Union, we know what the future holds. It’s the past that’s always changing.”      (lyrics below, after the song description)                                             
                                                     ****************
In this small, quaint college town, the town-gown relationship, for most of the 150 plus years since the college’s founding, had been productive.  The town benefited economically,  & students appreciated the town's charm, history & heritage.   Often on sunny days, classes of students would visit the park at the downtown square, brought by their history professors to learn not only of the town's history, but also about eleven young local men lost in America's Civil War, memorialized by the modest statue of a lone soldier, who had stood like a sentry at the the park's entrance since 1905.

But times change, don't they...
                                                   ********************

More Americans died in the American Civil War than in any other war in our country's history, including each of the World Wars.  In my song, the word "Daughters" references the Daughters Of The Confederacy, a women's civic group formed in the 1890's by daughters (and wives & nieces) of men lost in that war.  The attached picture is the inscription on the base of a statue of a uniformed soldier, standing in a park in Dallas, Georgia, a small town 30 miles northwest of Atlanta.
                                                            



Lyrics....
My name is McKenzie, and Jenkins and Embry,
And eight other names you still hear in these parts,
For over a century, I stood quiet at the entry,
On East Main into Lafayette Park,
A plaque was engraved, told why I was placed,
On those gardened grounds,
In this Small American Town.

Commissioned in 1905,
By the Daughters for fathers who died,
I was erected to honor eleven so bold,
Not a single one knowing he’d never grow old,
On these boys account I’d forever stand proud,
Stand sturdy & stout,
In this Small American Town.

The kids from the college on Heritage Hill,
Would hold class in the park’s warm sunshine,
They learned of this cruel war we waged with ourselves,
How 600,000 had died,
And of eleven from here just about their age,
Small farmers & blacksmiths & craftsmen by trade,
None fought for cotton, not one owned a slave,
And they learned why the Daughters placed me on that mound,
To keep those boys’ memories around,
In this Small American Town.

But enlightened new students don’t meet in that space,
Through new glasses old wars just don’t look the same,
Now scholars say men who went off to that war,
Fought not out of duty, but hate,
I feared I’d be forgotten by Heritage Hill,
Yesterday’s soldiers, obscure battlefields,
But alas, rearranged history determined my fate,
                          **************
Wise men have long warned of changing the past,
Of purges & vengeance & iconoclasts,
Then one fateful night there was smoke rolling down from the Hill,

Quickly surrounded by torches of fire,
Cursing & spitting & rage in the air,
Rope round my shoulders, a cheer by the crowd,
I came crashing down to the ground….
                         **************
An uneasy quiet in the town since that day,
Hushed conversations about how things have changed,
But up on the Hill it’s all smiles & goodwill,
For it’s the 2nd weekend in May,
Ceremonial speeches, awards all around,
Uncles & aunts & parents in town,
To watch the sweet children who torched & burned me to the ground,
Be awarded their caps & their gowns,
In this Small American Town.

Small American Town

The search for a more peaceful existence away from the commotion, corrupt or not, of society.

Let Me Go

My Island

Explicaciones Ignacio Labarca

Although quite simple to record, it took me a few weeks to write down a text and sing it over this beautiful guitar piece from Neno J. I used the original title as an inspiration for the text.

Circle of Circles 

Planets move in the dome of stars in surprising ways.
Sometimes forward, sometimes backward  in the celestial orb.

Since perfect circles are the only way of gods,
Ptolemy used circles within circles 
to explain those planetary retrogressions.
That was such a powerful idea 
that Fourier would later use.
Indeed, any periodic smooth motion
can be described by a large enough set of epicycles.

And yet, it all became history, 
thanks to Copernic, Kepler and Newton.
The epicycles were cast out from heaven
by the Occam's razor curse.
And I'm trying to learn the sobering lesson:
Everything gets simpler 
when we don't place ourselves in the center.

Your perfect circles, woman, are the chosen shape of gods.
But will the Fast Fourier Transform ever explain your beauty?

I watch you move in this world of scars in surprising ways.
But what is forward and what is backward in this oblivious maze?

Circle Of Circles JFC (Over Neno J. Guitar Piece)

Entropy Will Wait

A song about a friend lost in New Orleans

Seasons Make Sense

PERIGORD

I am a finger-style guitarist living on the Texas high plains.  At the core of my music is melody that is inspired and informed by my Christian faith, family, friends, and countless influences through the years from the great composers, to jazz, folk, rock, Latin, Celtic, and the many fine musicians I have come to love on the Cloud, some I have been privileged to collaborate with.  Thanks for stopping by to have a listen. Comments are always welcome. Feel free to click on the picture of any track to learn more about it.

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