A live performance of Rodrigo's Aranjuez Concerto 1st mvt. Performed by Richard Durrant (guitar) and Howard Beach (piano) on 6th Feb 2014 at the Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham by Sea, Sussex. Recorded by Martyn Baker (YouGig).

Rodrigo Aranjuez Concerto Mvt 1. Live. Richard Durrant (guitar) Howard Beach (piano).

I found this little gem on a DAT from 1999.  With Nick Pynn on violins, Tom Arnold on hammond and a huge drum kit. This is a full on example of Nick, Dick and Tom (our folk trio from the 1990’s)I think I'm playing some kind of weird bazooki and a piano. The rest is hard to explain - rather disturbing really.
If only we'd finished that difficult second album...

Old Hen (A penny one of those Mr Eastslip)(1999) by Richard Durrant

The second  movement (Danza) of Richard Durrant's mini guitar concerto "The Girl at the Airport" - Cancion y Danza.
Recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic in July 2015.
Released Feb 2016 (LongMan065CD).

The Girl at the Airport Part 2

This was recorded in 1987 on a 4 track Fostex cassette machine using a Tandy PZM mic which was hanging on a nail on my bedroom wall. It was mastered onto another cassette! So pretty crap audio really - I suppose this is a rare CC.CC.Digital production...(ha ha ha).
I made the first guitar part up as the first take and then listened back and made a note of anything I liked (I simply wrote down the tape counter number). Then I did two overdubs, again completely improv, but I played whilst watching the tap counter. I had no headphones, so at no point heard the other guitars whilst overdubbing relying on the numbers clicking round on the counter and what I remembered hearing. 
I wasn't being a total twonk - I was curious to hear the sonic coincidences and in the end I quite liked the vague narrative that emerged through my reverb, my detuned guitar and my rattling string ends.
I suppose it's a very apt, audio souvenir of living in Lowther Road, Brighton in the 80's without much gear...but still wanting to commit to any bits of tape I could get my hands, ears and fingers on.
(photo by Tom Fenn)

The River (1987) by Richard Durrant

"And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect
That gave the sweetness, 
Because it was that which gave the humanity."
(Thomas Hardy)

i h-bar gamma-mu d-mu psi minus m c psi equals zero
(Paul Dirac)

Neutron electric dipole moment (EDM), a small asymmetry in the structure of the neutron is strongly related to the question of why the universe contains so much more matter than anti-matter. This is ranked by the Science and Technology Research Council as one of the UK’s three top priority particle physics experiments.

"Dirac Equation - The Touch of the Imperfect" -  is taken from a set of pieces I wrote as part of an Arts Science collaboration with particle physicist Dr Philip Harris (Sussex University and Grenoble EDM), artist Malcolm Buchanan-Dick & opus+ inventor Adrian Marriot (June 17th 2009).

The seemingly random bleeps you can hear could be the most expensive musical notes ever produced. Searching for a genuine way to turn EDM's latest conclusions (EDM, Grenoble) into frequencies (notes) I found  Adrian Marriott’s automatic music composition program, Opus+, based on artificial intelligence algorithms, provided a perfect solution.

Dirac Equation  - The Touch of the Imperfect (2008) by Richard Durrant

I first wrote this chord sequence in April 1983 and remember recording early versions on my Tascam 244 Portastudio. I eventually recorded this rather alarming version in my Shoreham studio in March 2000 with the help of Tom Arnold on drums and hammond and Nick Pynn on fiddles. It really is a classic case of the forgotten archive - I can hardly believe my ears when I hear this vast,  scary soundscape. I have just managed to listen to it through to the end - now feeling slightly punch drunk. I seem to have cranked up the compressors and gone for number eleven...

UnderTheSky (March 2000)by Richard Durrant

Another strange one from the archives and photo to match. 
This was recorded on 28th August 2006 in my studio using my Nick Benjamin guitar (by the sound of it) and the school double bass (before we had one in the studio). I must have used Cubase VST - but I already had a U87 so the guitar sounds ok.  Check out the crazy compression across the stereo mix.
This time of year I would have probably been out fishing or swimming around the bay. Some things never change..Slide Home...across the sand...yeh baby!

Slide Home (August 28th 2006) by Richard Durrant

"Music for Lidos" was written for a BBC doc about Lidos back in the early 90's (the picture of me was taken that same year by Tom Fenn).  The Lido film was directed by Christopher Dudman, a wonderful film maker who now lives in New Zealand.  The film was astonishingly beautiful with lots of slo-mo dives into mirror like Lido pools. A real celebration of the architecture.
The piano was played by Julian Rhodes - a remarkable musician who died so very young, a tragic loss to us all. I wrote the music in Herbie Flower's bothy on his lovely baby grand one afternoon (thanks Herb!).
A strong memory I have of my Lido music is my brother Eddie phoning me one day saying that he'd just bought Pink Floyd's "Division Bell" and that they'd stolen my Lido music. Well - if Dave G saw the Lido film that's a cool thought.  I always thought a three note motif might be pushing it a bit with copyright - but my brother remained adamant!

Music For Lidos (1992) by Richard Durrant.AIF

In early September 2018 I was invited to appear live on the Tom Robinson Show. I was surprised and delighted to stay for so long (45 minutes)!
Tom was an absolute delight and the love and respect I already had for the man got even bigger!! 
Thanks Tom and team.

Tom Robinson & RD on BBC6 Music Sept2018

The Sound of Concentration by RD 
(originally Little Fugue by Domenico Zipoli) 

A classic, little guitar piece rewritten for my French Guitar Adventurers holiday in July 2019.

I have loved the Little Fugue, by Italian born Zipoli, since I was about 9 years old.  I spotted it in a big, fat book of guitar pieces that my Dad bought me. The melody has been with me for most of my life and it is only today, having finished an arrangement of the piece for the guitarists coming to France, that I tried to find out more about the composer and I am stunned by what I have just read (bearing in mind my strong links with Paraguay).  
Zipoli studied for a while in Italy under Allesandro Scarlatti (notable in itself of course) but in 1716 he boarded a ship in a Spanish port and sailed across to South America. His ambition was to train as a Jesuit Priest in order to work in the Reductions of Paraguay. He made it as far as Cordoba,  Argentina but, due to complications with his qualification as a priest, didn’t continue onto Paraguay.  Instead he worked in a Jesuit Church in Argentina and became well known as a composer.  He died in 1726 of an unknown infectious illness.

So - his lovely little piece has now been corrupted by me - and will be heard in France this summer played by those guitar holidaymakers. 

The top three guitars are graded in difficulty from to Guitar 1 to Guitar 3 and the rhythm guitar is pretty straightforward to play.  It ends with me playing the original Zipoli solo.

I have rechristened it “The Sound of Concentration” as it is supposed to sound like a typical, FGA musical workout. I’ve achieved this by sharing the little, fugal notes out between the guitars and introduced a nice, relaxed groove hinting at the variety of styles that come to light during a typical FGA week. It sounds like we’re all concentrating and studying hard as in the picture…

The Sound Of Concentration (2019) by Richard Durrant

A special PILOT episode of Richard's new podcast The Barefoot Guitarist. 
In the first ever edition Richard talks to Knepp Wildlife Officer Penny Green, musician, composer and prog rock God Brian Gulland, artist Jon Everitt and soil scientist David St Maur Sheil. 
Recorded in October 2020 just prior to the release of Richard's album REWILDING.

TheBarefootGuitarist - Pilot - REWILDING

Welcome to my Soundcloud page which I use to store tracks of mine that don't appear on any of my albums or as downloads (with the exception of The Girl at the Airport which stays!).
I really hope you enjoy this stuff. The collection of tracks should end up being pretty varied and will span a long period of time. But then it would, as I've been obsessed with recording since my early teens and still it continues.
By the way - I still own all the rights in these recordings, so if you want to use any of the music you'll have to contact me direct - otherwise it's ears only and hands off.

Richard Durrant (unreleased archive material)

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