Street Performing in Holland, Michigan (June 30, 2016)

In the town I live in there is a summer street performing series on Thursdays. It's a great event with lots of musicians, artists, jugglers, circus performers, and so on. This year I decided to be part of it.

I played for 2 hours and I distilled that to 2 min. My son took the video.

I am playing...
Northern Lights (original)
Leyenda
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
House of the Rising Sun
Ebb and Flow (original)
Locomotion (original)
La Guitarra (original)
Improvisation

I am playing a Cordoba guitar that is mic'ed using a Bartlett Guitar Mic B. I am running that into a little battery powered Vox amp.

Enjoy!

-Rob

Untitled (work in progress) by Rob Lunn

Here is a video of a piece I have been composing for the last few days. This particular excerpt comes towards the end. Most of the piece is made up of the chord progression: Am/F/Am/F/Dm/E

I will post a video of the entire piece once it is completed.

Enjoy!

-Rob

Silver Stream (2016) by Rob Lunn

Silver Streams comes from my Year of the Guitar Suite that I composed a few years back. I have decided to redo some of my older videos.

Scarborough Fair arr by Rob Lunn

This is one of my favorite folk songs. Love Simon and Garfunkel's version of it. This was originally recorded on my Northern Lights album.

Composing Using a Repeating Chord Progression

Most of the time I compose by first writing a melody, or at least a melodic figure. Sometimes I compose by first writing a chord progression. That is what I did when I composed Willow:

The chord progression is: C, G, Am, Em, F, C, Dm, G. This than repeats 4 more times beginning at :27,:48, 1:02, and 1:18. What I do is play the chord differently each time through (called a Variation). For example, the progression begins with a C chord. Here is an example of the C chord beginning each time through the chord progression (click on image to make bigger):

It’s still a C chord (C Chord= C, E, and G), but each one is a little different. I used the same technique in my arrangement of House of the Rising Sun.

The chord progression is: Am, C, D, F, Am, C, E, E, Am, C, D, F, Am, E, Am, E. It starts at 0:15. Each time through I make changes (variations). The first variation (0:39) I play the melody and chords in an upper register (higher). Second variation (1:00) I play faster (triplets). Third variation (1:20) faster yet (16th notes). Final variation (1:41) strumming.

-Rob

scores, tabs, mp3s available at http://www.robertlunncomposer.com