I composed and recorded all nine selections of "Six String Orchestra"... A Solo Guitar Suite... in less than a week. The songs in their entirety just came to me like a river flowing... or the images passing before my eyes as if I were on some journey... experiencing places perhaps never before seen by anyone. Music, as a moving form of art is like a living entity... or life itself. It is like a dream... from which I would say much of music creativity comes from in the first place.
All the individual pieces on the recording are also presented in their original position, as they came to me just sitting and playing guitar. There is also no overdubbing, retakes, or edits on any of the selections... they stand as they were first envisioned. All are performed solo, that is... as Only One Guitar Pieces... and were completely un-rehearsed, pre-composed or thought out prior to playing in a completely spontaneous, improvised style... I call Spontaneous Composition. I like to do music this way, just sit down and play... seeing, or should I say hearing what comes out on the recording... then with some thought, creating a title for the individual song or whole album.
The title for the album itself "Six String Orchestra" was inspired from two sources. After the whole nine pieces were finished I thought of these two. First was a statement that was supposed to have been said by the composer Beethoven... after hearing the guitarworks and performance of Fernando Sor, a guitarist concertizing in Vienna while Beethoven was there. Accordingly Beethoven was to have said that "In The Hands Of Sor The Guitar Was A Miniature Orchestra Itself". Secondly, was a situation closer to home, and I mean "closer to home" literally.
Back in the late 1970s I lived in Huntington NY, on Long Island. It was where... Huntington that was really significant here, our home was at Five Richard Lane. That home was in The Flower Hill Elementary School District, where just up the road a piece lived Singer/Songwriter Harry Chapin. Harry and his wife Sandy had two children Jennifer and Josh... who attended the Flower Hill School, and my daughter was also enrolled there, and a classmate of Jennifer. I had the pleasure of seeing and frequently talking to Harry when we dropped the kids off at school daily. This is where the second inspiration for the title came to be... Harry often called his guitar a "Six String Orchestra", as also Beethoven had referred to it as an Orchestra in itself... and he had only written nine symphonies, the title of these nine solo guitar pieces came to be... "Six String Orchestra". Of course the suite of my nine guitar pieces in no way match the creations of Beethoven, but this was the origin of the pieces as a tour through The World Of Sound... As Experienced Through The Guitar... My Six String Orchestra.
This World Of Sound, however, is one that is Not Out There... but one that comes from within, within the cauldron of the ever creative mind . It is a world of unlimited shapes, forms and probabilities. One of endless sculptures in sound... ever changing and shifting as we look upon them... so to speak, through our ears. Music is like experiencing the slight of hand of some grand act of magic. The hand(s)... perhaps even being our own... and the magician our mind. After all, We Are Man... We Are The Creators of Dreams and Reality. We have the power, or the force if we wish to call it that... to create our own world... and our destiny. Hence, Six String Orchestra is just one tiny, meager manifestation of this creative process... call it life.
Craig
All the individual pieces on the recording are also presented in their original position, as they came to me just sitting and playing guitar. There is also no overdubbing, retakes, or edits on any of the selections... they stand as they were first envisioned. All are performed solo, that is... as Only One Guitar Pieces... and were completely un-rehearsed, pre-composed or thought out prior to playing in a completely spontaneous, improvised style... I call Spontaneous Composition. I like to do music this way, just sit down and play... seeing, or should I say hearing what comes out on the recording... then with some thought, creating a title for the individual song or whole album.
The title for the album itself "Six String Orchestra" was inspired from two sources. After the whole nine pieces were finished I thought of these two. First was a statement that was supposed to have been said by the composer Beethoven... after hearing the guitarworks and performance of Fernando Sor, a guitarist concertizing in Vienna while Beethoven was there. Accordingly Beethoven was to have said that "In The Hands Of Sor The Guitar Was A Miniature Orchestra Itself". Secondly, was a situation closer to home, and I mean "closer to home" literally.
Back in the late 1970s I lived in Huntington NY, on Long Island. It was where... Huntington that was really significant here, our home was at Five Richard Lane. That home was in The Flower Hill Elementary School District, where just up the road a piece lived Singer/Songwriter Harry Chapin. Harry and his wife Sandy had two children Jennifer and Josh... who attended the Flower Hill School, and my daughter was also enrolled there, and a classmate of Jennifer. I had the pleasure of seeing and frequently talking to Harry when we dropped the kids off at school daily. This is where the second inspiration for the title came to be... Harry often called his guitar a "Six String Orchestra", as also Beethoven had referred to it as an Orchestra in itself... and he had only written nine symphonies, the title of these nine solo guitar pieces came to be... "Six String Orchestra". Of course the suite of my nine guitar pieces in no way match the creations of Beethoven, but this was the origin of the pieces as a tour through The World Of Sound... As Experienced Through The Guitar... My Six String Orchestra.
This World Of Sound, however, is one that is Not Out There... but one that comes from within, within the cauldron of the ever creative mind . It is a world of unlimited shapes, forms and probabilities. One of endless sculptures in sound... ever changing and shifting as we look upon them... so to speak, through our ears. Music is like experiencing the slight of hand of some grand act of magic. The hand(s)... perhaps even being our own... and the magician our mind. After all, We Are Man... We Are The Creators of Dreams and Reality. We have the power, or the force if we wish to call it that... to create our own world... and our destiny. Hence, Six String Orchestra is just one tiny, meager manifestation of this creative process... call it life.
Craig
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