Category Archives: Improvisation

House Concert Vol. 1 (Abana in Heaven, Godfather, and more).

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I recorded these originals/arrangements in one take, although I did cut out me tuning the guitar. The song order is:

Abana in Heaven by Laila Constantine (0:41)

Dance of the Red Dragon (2:25)

The Godfather (Love Theme) by Nino Rota (3:26)

Melancholy from my Red Guitar Suite (5:27)

A Little Waltz for a Little Girl (8:27)

Dee by Randy Rhoads (10:56)

Equipment used:

Cordoba C7 Guitar

2017 iPad running forscore

Page Flip bluetooth page turner

2 Rode NT1-A microphones 2020

Macbook Pro

Cubase to record the audio

Final Cut Pro to edit the video

Redline reverb

An Ode To You

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An Ode to You by Bhadra Saru and Robert Lunn

This is an improvisation I did a year ago which Bhadra then added words to it.

Here are the lyrics: How could I not love your little ocean blue eyes?

How can I just not see the only sun which shone through, all those years of terrible grey skies? How could I not just love you… For all the times you’ve been there…

Mending all those broken strings of my heart…?

How could I not… … … Just love you?

Gentle Waves

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I have been composing more lately (as opposed to making arrangements). One way I will compose is by improvising on an idea in order to generate ideas for the piece. I’d like to make a solo guitar arrangement of a piece I improvised using the program Max/MSP. The piece is called, Gentle Waves…

I like the melody and the basic idea but I would like to play it on guitar without using Max/MSP. I just did this improvisation using some of the basic ideas of the piece…

Gentle Waves Improvisation

Improv with Vocalization

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Here is something I haven’t posted before: an improvisation with some vocalizing. I certainly wouldn’t call it singing. At some point I would really like to learn how to overtone sing. I can get it a little but it certainly isn’t something I can control. If you are unfamiliar with this type of singing check out this video:

I also love the singing style of Manuel Molina. He just belts it out:

I also love the all-white suit!! I need one of those!

-Rob

New Video, Finished Piece and More…

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I just uploaded a video I recorded back in December. I recorded myself playing for about a 1/2 hour and then cut it down to this. The order of songs is:

Texting and Improvisation

A Little Waltz for a Little Girl 1:28

Improvisation 5:02

Grey Skies 5:28

Fur Elise 7:17

Amazing Grace 8:18

Fantasia (Red Guitar Suite) 10:47

I finally finished the Piano Trio piece I was working on:

The piece is going to be performed in April. It’s going to be on a program of Beethoven pieces so I incorporated a few of my favorite Beethoven melodies and themes into this piece. Some are obvious and some are not so obvious. You can download and listen to the full score here:

two-strings-one-piano-and-a-slice-of-beethoven-combinedDownload
Two Strings, One Piano, and a Slice of Beethoven

On a side note I got booties for my dog which he hates. Here is a picture of him being like, “if I don’t see him, he’s not there.”

I teach at Lake Michigan College. I have taught there on and off since 1997 and last week I taught in a place in the building that I have never taught before and saw this:

I have taught in this building for over 20 years and just now seeing this!!! My wife does tell me I am not the most observant person but DANG. Very cool. Looking down in this picture.

I hope everyone is doing well.

-Rob

Etude 8 (Improvisation)

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I am currently writing a set of 8 etudes for the guitar. Each of them includes some kind of an extended technique. This particular one uses a slide which isn’t used a lot in the classical guitar literature. I have always loved the sound. Check this video out…

And if haven’t already checked out the famous Messiahsez, by all means do…

There were a couple surprises that I found sounded interesting in my improv. The first was that when the slide is used with tremolo it produces a pretty cool sound. Also, artificial harmonics can slide around with a slide. Often before writing a piece I will improvise around on an idea or two. That is what I am doing in this video.