Twenty Popular Uke Tunes For Kids!

Fresh from Mel Bay Publications, my latest uke book, this one aimed at kids, but if my adult students are anything to go by, this one will be popular to all ages!

and a video to promote it:

Available in most good stores, but also from the Mel Bay website, where it can also be downloaded as a pdf with mp3 soundfiles…

This is one of the very beautiful Ukrainian folk song arrangements by Jacobus Olevsiensis. Played on a lute by Bill Samson. I very much enjoy playing these arrangements discovered by Roman Turovsky, who also made the video…

Something a bit unusual, perhaps… Here are two test recordings I’ve done of pieces of cello music by Bach, which I’ve arranged for the Gold Tone Cello Banjo (CEB-4). I think they work really well, and have confirmed my decision to arrange the first three cello suites of Bach for the Tenor and Cello Banjos. The publishing giant, Mel Bay, has agreed to publish the arrangements, and that book will have an accompanying CD.

Here are the two cello banjo performances:

I already recorded the full first cello suite, played on a magnificent Tenor Banjo by Deering, the Eagle II:

Frank Converse wrote the most advanced music for the banjo in the 19th century. Here are two of his pieces from his Analytical Banjo Method of 1887, The Dell Schottische, and Boquet Mazurka.

The banjo is from circa 1900, by Parslow, with nylon strings.

Enjoy 🙂

The young animator, Nik Ottinger, used my banjo playing to great effect in this moving short film. Enjoy:

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.