Category Archives: Originals

Little Red Riding Hood for Guitar and Narrator

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little-red-cap-scoreDownload

I decided to compose guitar music for the Grimm Fairy Tale, Little Red Riding Hood, because I thought it would be fun. I started this project back in October (2019) and finished writing it about a week ago. I got sidetracked with other projects which is why it took so long.

Throughout this piece I use a lot of different extended techniques for the guitar to try and create various moods. At times I pluck the string to the left of my left hand fingers, I hit the fingerboard with my right hand, I strum notes over the sound hole and so on. I hope you enjoy it. I don’t have the best voice to be a narrator but since I am stuck at home because of the virus, that is really all I’ve got.

-Rob

Practicing (04-09-2020)

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I was doing some practicing earlier today and decided to hit record on my video camera. I am running through songs I haven’t played through in awhile. Songs include:

Scarborough Fair (0:51), A Lighter Shade of Blue (3:34), House of the Rising Sun (5:00), A Joyful Noise (9:34) and Lagrima (14:03)

Enjoy the good, bad, and ugly!!

-Rob

Magnificent Mountain for Mandolin Orchestra

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Magnificent Mountain for Mandolin Orchestra by Rob Lunn

This is the world premiere performance by the En Masse Orchestra led by Jim Bates at the Classical Mandolin Society’s national convention. The performance took place at the Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois on October 12, 2019.

I had a ton of fun at this conference. I enjoyed meeting people, doing workshops and working with the orchestra. The score/parts is available at my website http://robertlunn.com

The piece was inspired by a trip I made to the Smoky Mountains last June (2019). One day my son and I drove up into the mountains and it was amazing to me see how the landscape changed. At times, when the fog was heavy, it was very mysterious. At other times, when the sun was shinning it was very magnificent. I tried to covey those feelings in this piece. The instrumentation is: mandolin 1, mandolin 2, mandola, mandocello, classical guitar, and double bass.

Here are a few pics from the conference:

Speaking about the piece before it was performed.
Giving a workshop on recording

Leviathan

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Leviathan is a piece I composed a few years ago. I started messing with techno beats in Cubase and started improvising to them. I would say that 90% of this came from one of those improvisations. Score/tab is free at my website.

I am finishing up another album and messing around with album cover ideas. None of these will work but here are a few…

This one might have possibilities….

Fun Jazzy Piece

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Happy Friday!! Or Friyay!! I actually hate that phrase. I have a friend who says, “I don’t hate.” I’m not above a little hate. OMG what am I talking about???? Is it even OK for a 45-year-old man to use the phrase, “OMG?”

This is the end of my piece, Fun Jazzy Piece. I composed this piece around 4 or 5 years ago. I wrote the original bass line 25 (??) years ago. Maybe 20. I wrote it on the piano but could never really do much with it. About 5 years ago I decided to try the bass line on the guitar and I ended up writing the entire piece in a few days. I recorded it on my “There’s a New Sheriff In Town” album which for whatever reason my bandcamp page is down so I can add a link. Not cool.

I have been making a lot of arrangements lately and I plan on recording a new album next week. The album will be all arrangements and will include:

Nothing Else Matters (Metallica)

Hurt (NIN/Johnny Cash)

The Godfather Theme

Schindler’s List Theme

and about 7 other arrangements.

-Rob

Lament III

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Last year (and the year before) I composed 12 laments for the classical guitar. The score/tabs for these can be found on my website for FREE.

I am excited about one thing. Ok, maybe a few things. It is super cold in Michigan (where I live) so that is nothing to be excited about. Anyways…I’ve always avoided making arrangements of copyrighted songs because I didn’t want to deal with the licensing issues involved. Long story short (thank you, Rob), I am going to start arranging copyrighted music. I made a list of pieces I would like to arrange. Here they are:

The Godfather (Love Theme), Nothing Else Matters, Hurt (Nine Inch Nails), Pirates of the Caribbean, Imagine, Stairway to Heaven, Hallelujah, Dust in the Wind, The Mission (Oboe Theme), Chariots of Fire, Schindler’s List, and so on and so on. There are like 200 on this list.

Anyways…that’s all I’ve got for now.

-Rob

Funky Soul Butter/Ezel/Willow

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I recorded three pieces in one shot with no edits. My original plan was to record six pieces but there was an EPIC FAIL on piece number four so…..you just got three:

Funky Soul Butter (0:00), Ezel (3:02) and Willow (4:45)

Funky Soul Butter is a piece I composed a few years ago and recorded it on my Funky Soul Butter album recorded about a year ago.

Ezel is a Turkish crime drama. A Turkish Instagram friend recommended that I make a guitar arrangement of the main theme. I couldn’t find sheet music for it so I ended up transcribing it. Here is the original if you don’t know it…

Willow comes from my Year of the Guitar Suite. I composed these pieces back in 2013-14 and recorded them in 2015.

The scores/tabs for each one of these is free at my website.

Side note…

Holiday fun is now over. My brother (and family) and sister (and family) were in town for the last week. My brother has 5 kids and my sister has 3. Lots of kids. It was very loud but a lot of fun. Sad to see them go. Here is a pic of my new nephew….

-Rob

P.S. I have listened to 57 of Buckethead’s 300 (and change) Pikes. Hopefully I can finish them this year.

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.

Magnificent Mountain for Mandolin Orchestra

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Wow, what an amazing couple of days for me. I went to Normal, Illinois to attend the Classical Mandolin Society of America‘s national conference. I was commissioned to write a piece for this conference and Magnificent Mountain was the piece I composed. It was inspired by a trip I made to the Smoky Mountains back in June (2019). My son and I took a trip up into the mountains one day. As we were going up one of the mountains it was amazing to watch the landscape change. At certain points it looked very mysterious because of the way the clouds surrounded the mountains. At other times the landscape looked very grand and magnificent when the sun came through the clouds. The music was composed to reflect these different moods and changes of character throughout.

This was a wonderful conference. I met a lot of really nice people who were very passionate about music. I ran a couple of workshops (one on composing and the other on recording), went to concerts and socialized. Guest performers included Naeim Rahmami, Sebastiaan de Grebber, and Fabio Giudice. They were all amazing artists and really nice people. The final concert included the En Masse Orchestra directed by Dr. Jim Bates. The En Masse Orchestra was made up of 140 convention attendees!!

A few pictures and videos…

Here I am giving a workshop on composing music.

Friday night concert

It was a wonderful event. I have to make a few adjustments to the score and then I will post it on my website for free. I would love for this to be performed by other orchestras as well. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

-Rob