Rob MacKillop ~ Musician

I’ll be giving two seminars at the first Edinburgh Guitar and Music Festivals.

Saturday 25 May – Fingerstyle for all styles

In this workshop I’ll be looking at how people have played fingerstyle over the years, the changing styles and techniques, and how their technique affected the music they played. I will also perform some classical guitar, some ragtime, as well as my own arrangements of Scottish music in Open D tuning.

Monday 27 May – Ukulele for Guitarists

I will introduce the family of ukuleles, the techniques used, a little background history, and perform lots of items from my seven ukulele fingerstyle books.

Hope to see you there. See the Festival website for details.

I’m delighted to announce my new album:

Fernando Sor: The Art Of The 19th-Century Guitar, Volume 1

This recording is devoted to 32 of my favourite studies by this towering genius of the early 19th-century classical guitar. It is a download-only album, available from iTunes, Amazon and CD Baby:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/robmackillop3 - where you can hear excerpts.

I use a modern copy of the type of guitar favoured by Sor, a Lacote by Michael Nalysnyk of http://www.historicalguitars.co.uk, using gut and silk strings by Aquila-Corde, specially formulated for the early 19th-century repertoire.

I have also tried to get as close as possible to the technique outlined by Sor in his Method.

Not familiar with Fernando Sor? Think Mozart and Schubert, with a Spanish-French influence…

The album is set at a low price, and once downloaded can be played on your computer, iPad, phone, or burned to a CD. The CD Baby page includes Programme Notes.

Please Like, Share, and Tweet about!

Time is flying by, so I should take stock of what has happened this year.

I had some fun with a guitar by Michael Nalysnyk of http://www.historicalguitars.co.uk. He made a copy of a Lacote guitar, the type favoured by Fernando Sor. So, I made a few videos of Sor’s music on this beautiful instrument (which is on loan from Michael – many thanks!)

You can view all these videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/RobMacKillop/videos?view=1

I also added a few more to my Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar book series, including:

And a very beautiful arrangement from 1950s, by Barry Galbraith, of Lerner and Loewe’s “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face”

As usual, I’m getting torn between different styles, instruments, periods, but life would be tedious otherwise. I love all the music I play, therfore there is no problem. I’d like to do more jazz, maybe working with a singer.

I’ve also made more contributions to my http://www.ScottishLute.com project – see the updates page.

Photography is a fairly serious hobby with me now, and I’m halfway through an Open University course in Digital Photography. You can see some of my efforts here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robmac1/sets/72157629503917131/

The next few months? Stay tuned…

What a year! Four ukulele books and two banjo books, each with a CD and TAB, plus a banjo download album (on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon, etc) and a recording of 17th-century Scottish music with baroque guitar and viol. The final two uke books have just appeared. Check out the links (the author info needs updating!).

Mel Bay Publications have just brought the second of my two banjo books, this one is the Early Irish-American Banjo:

This one has music by Irish Americans of the 19th century, played on a gut-strung banjo. The TAB is for 5-string banjos, plus two tunings of tenor banjo: GDAE and CGDA. Click the photo for a link to the Mel Bay site. Available as hard copy with CD, or download with mp3 files.

My first banjo book has just emerged into the light. It consists of 27 tunes from 19th-century sources.

Check the info, contents and some samples HERE   

It comes with a CD of my performances on a gut-strung banjo, played with the flesh of the fingers (not metal picks). The sound is very different from the banjo of today, but the music can be played on modern banjos. Some great music in there!

From the publicity blurb:

Here is the Forgotten Heritage: Great Banjo Music!

Discover the birth of the American fingerstyle banjo in this collection of 28 of the finest tunes culled from banjo publications between 1860 and 1887. Learn amazing banjo music by some of the early leading players, James Buckley, Albert Baur, and the great Frank B. Converse, the greatest virtuoso of his day. From folk-style dances to parlor dances such as the Polka, Mazurka and Schottische, to advanced Romantic-period classical-style solos.

Can be played on modern banjos or period-style instruments. The CD recording by Rob MacKillop features a gut-strung banjo, and is played with the flesh of the fingertips, in the old American tuning. For modern instrument players, Rob has provided TAB and a Standard Notation stave at modern banjo pitch. Clawhammer players will find many of the pieces in the book suitable for their technique, and bluegrass/fingerstyle players will be able to play all the pieces.

Rob MacKillop provides a fascinating introductory essay, placing the music in its historical context, while his CD of performances can be viewed as a stand-alone recording by a leading player in the revival of this great American banjo heritage.

Here is the first video I’ve made with my new Malcolm Prior 13-course lute. 

Robert de Visee was a chamber musician at the court of Louis XIV. He wrote this funeral lament on the death of a very famous lute player of the day, DuBut.