Dale's Music Stuff

Compositions

First impressions count. In most cases first impressions are everything and there's even some science to back that up. For this reason I've so far not released any of my compositions for guitar. My performance skills are more enthusiastic than polished. A friend suggested that with digital editing available for sound I should be able to correct for mistakes, but so far that approach hasn't panned out. However, exploring an entirely different issue led to an unexpected solution.

I have page after page of hand-written guitar compositions gathering dust from the '70s. Now that I'm back doing music I got them out and tried to sort the wheat from the chaff. The good news is that I discovered a few kernels of wheat that I'd long since forgotten; the bad news is that most of my laboriously written pieces contained enough notational errors as to need re-writing. That's when it occurred to me that there must be software out there that functions as the musical equivalent of word processing.

And indeed there is; but more than that, these products also allow you to generate simulated performances from the scores you type in. On top of that, you can choose which instruments you want to use to play back each part ... and that in turn allowed me to scratch an itch I didn't even know I had. As I laboriously type in compositions I wrote decades ago for solo guitar, I'm now free to orchestrate them for any combination of instruments that my fevered imagination can concoct, then press a button to hear the result. So now I say: if variety be the spice of life, play on, MacDuff – and curs'd be he who first cries hold enough!

I'm still in my infancy with this technology; nevertheless, I think the following are good enough that your first impressions won't be traumatized by the rendition:

(Click the blue square for a 15 sec. sample or the title for the full download):

New! Child's Play Suite by Dale Cotton, arranged for oboe and harp (6 min/9 MB)
New! Passion Flowers by Dale Cotton, arranged for harp solo (4.5 min/6 MB)
New! Reckoning Day by Dale Cotton, arranged for harp solo (3 min/4 MB)
New! Tempus Non Relentus and Jig by Dale Cotton, arranged for oboe, english horn, and vibraphone (3 min/4 MB)
New! May It Please by Dale Cotton, arranged for music box (2.5 min/3.5 MB)
New! Vernor's Ginger Ale by Dale Cotton, arranged for vibraphone and harp (1 min/1.5 MB)

Tutorials for Steel String Acoustic Guitar Players

Practical Music Theory for Guitar Players (my latest 31 page magnum opus)
How to buy an acoustic guitar

Finger picking hand techniques: (revised 7 Nov 2010)

Tabs for Guitar Players

Tablature is a form of notation for fretted instruments that goes back to the middle ages and flourished in the European renaissance, as for example this Dargesson holograph. The particular form of tablature provided here is my modification of the one that has evolved on the web. I've added note duration indicators, prettified the layout to some degree, and packaged it in PDF. For more information on basic text tab see How to read and write tab. To understand note durations see Unit 4 of my music theory tutorial, above.

Tabs of John Fahey compositions:

Sunflower River Blues (original open C tuning)
Sunflower River Blues (transposed to drop-D)
Joe Kirby Blues (standard tuning, key of Am)
Some of These Days (transposed to drop-D)
The Last Steam Engine Train (standard tuning, E, my arrangement)

Tabs of my arrangements of other compositions:

Daisy Bell by Harry Dacre (standard tuning, key of C) Listen (1.1 MB)
Over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen (standard tuning, key of G) Listen (4.2 MB)
The Ballad of Davy Crockett by George Bruns and Dale Cotton (standard tuning, key of C)

Other tabs:

The Fairie Round by Anthony Holborne (standard tuning, key of E)
Dargesson by Anonymous (standard tuning, key of G/A)
Pavanas por la D con Partidas al Aire Español by Gaspar Sanz (standard tuning, key of A minor)
Villanos by Gaspar Sanz (standard tuning, key of A ~major)

Guitar plus accompaniment

It'll be some time (if ever) before I get all my chops back, so if my playing sounds a tad amateur, that's because it is. You have been warned.

In this track Mika, the African Grey, unexpectedly chimes in with a vocal track, throwing me off stride:

The Last Steam Engine Train by John Fahey (3.5 MB)

Not to be left out, Tabiki the Tres Marias Amazon has his say:

Autumn Leaves by Joseph Kosma (Jerry Snyder arrangement,1.8 MB)

Some John Fahey Resources for Guitar Players

John Fahey's compositions inspired me to learn the guitar in the late '60s, then got me going again in 2010. There is an excellent, official John Fahey web site, most of which hasn't been updated since before the advent of YouTube. Here are some resources I feel should be referenced there but aren't: