I’ve played guitar for 35 or so years, with various styles, instruments and periods.
My main Classical Guitar Website is HERE
Specific pages on this website are as follows:
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Rob MacKillop ~ Musician
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Hi Rob,
I love how versatile you are with guitar! I have a dilemma…I don’t know whether to study Classical or Jazz guitar. I just can’t decide between the two. If you had a chance to go back and study one at university which one would you choose?
Thanks,
Natalie
Hi Natalie. I would choose classical, as the solo repertoire covers 500 years of music, whereas jazz depends on what I create, largely based on a standard repertoire. But 19th-century guitarists used to improvise – check out my 19th-century guitar and Sor pages – which needs to be brought back into modern classical-guitar playing. And South American music often uses jazz chords and sometimes improvisation too. So, to sum up, I’d choose classical, but try to bring in some of the elements of jazz. I hope that helps! Rob
Thanks for your reply Rob! I never looked at it like that, wow. Thankyou 🙂
Rob,
Thanks for all you do to promote experimentation and tone quality on the guitar. I’m astonished at the range of repertory and instruments that you play.
I need a piece of advice regarding bass strings. I have just acquired a set of gut trebles from Dan Larson. These are the classical guitar light gauge trebles. He is not marketing basses for the moment. For basses I’m considering La Bella Argento medium or Aquila rayon basses, probably the low tension.
They will go onto a spruce/cypress instrument with 650mm scale and low action.
I wonder if you could share your advice on a good bass match for the Larson trebles.
Thanks for whatever you can offer.
Sincerely,
Tony Grieco
Hi Tony. With gut strings the Rayon basses are a good match, but they are prone to breaking. My advice is to email Aquil Corde from their website in Italy. They speak English well. They have a new synthetic-core basses which I highly recommend, but I just can’t remember what they are called! I’m recovering from Covid-19, and my brain is not firing on all cylinders at the moment. They will help you out. Best wishes. Rob
Rob, I am sorry to learn that you have Covid-19 and certainly wish you a full recovery.
Thanks for the suggestion to contact Aquila.
Be well!
Tony
Cheers, Tony. I’ll get there. Take care.
Hello Rob, I just got on your site to ask about tenor guitar or tenor banjo. I hope your health is improving! Best well wishes from the states!
I have your Bach Tenor Banjo book which I use my tenor guitar with. I was looking for other tenor banjo/ guitar music.
Hi Jean. I’m slowly improving, thankfully. The only other tenor book I have is Early Irish-American Banjo (Mel Bay). There are many tenor banjo books by other authors, just search around. Cheers, Rob.
Hi Jean, my first reply to you disappeared, so I’m going to try to remember what I said.
Thanks, I’m improving daily.
I only have one other tenor-banjo book: Early Irish-American Banjo, but there are many other tenor-banjo books by other authors. Just have a search. Best wishes, Rob
Thanks! I will look into that book and going to take a listen to some clips from your new CD! I am glad to hear you are improving.
Greetings, Rob. I am contacting you from Virginia, but my family originally came through Pennsylvania from Edinburgh. My great-father’s great-grandfather wrote alternate lyrics to the tune of “Alexander hated thinking”. I believe I found the original lyrics in “Songs of England and Scotland” under a title of “In Praise or Drink”. These were on Google Books page 147.
Anyway, I have not been able to locate the accompanying music, and I was wondering if you were familiar with this tune. I’m happy to buy any of your songbooks that contain the music.
Thanks in advance,
Andrew
Sorry, Andrew, I haven’t come across it. Sounds interesting, though!
Rob