LEARN TO PLAY GORDON GILTRAP’S BEAUTIFUL SOLO COMPOSITION FOR ACOUSTIC

Gordon Giltrap is a true virtuoso. Here, we let the man himself take you through one of his beautiful solo pieces

Taken from Gordon Giltrap’s album Troubadour, The Lord’s Seat is a beautiful, haunting solo guitar piece. Remarkably, the original recording was made at home by Gordon himself. But, without further ado, we’ll hand you over to the master for the story behind it and a few technical hints to help you navigate your way through.

“The Lord’s Seat was written many, many years ago for a documentary on the working aristocracy for BBC Two. The title refers to a beauty spot in the Lake District and I felt I wanted something kind of medieval and John Dowland-ish; that’s the kind of brief I was given and I think that’s the reason why they approached me.

“It was originally composed on a little Rob Armstrong baby guitar in what is basically a C tuning – CGCGCD, one of my favourites. I’ve written loads of pieces in it and it sounds great on a standard guitar, though there are a few stretches that the player may find a little bit challenging, but you can always capo up at the 4th fret. That makes life a lot easier! I currently play it on a Paul Brett Viator guitar, which sounds fantastic.”

Technical Difficulties

“I do a kind of triplet hammer in the opening section and, about the fourth or fifth bar, there’s quite a long stretch covering about four to five frets, which you need to take care of. But apart from that there’s nothing major that the player would find challenging. I think the secret is to keep the tempo right and think of it in terms of being played on a lute in a Baronial hall. When I do it live I normally tweak the reverb up a bit – it gives you that lovely cathedral sound. I think that’s it, really.

“You look back on these pieces and think, ‘Well, I don’t know how I did it, but I got it right then’ and I think if you get things right, as the years go by the piece teaches you how it should be performed. I find that with a lot of my pieces. I can play pieces now and think,‘Ah, that’s the way it should have been performed when I first wrote it.’ It’s having the courage to slow down and make space within the music and let the piece breathe. That takes a long time.”

The Recorded Piece

“When I recorded it I was using one of the very first pickups that Mike Vanden was making – a single-coil pickup. The preamp was built into the end pin jack and because it was a single-coil pickup I had to position myself in a certain area of where I was recording it – facing a radiator, if I recall! I think I recorded it straight to DAT and I didn’t know how to drop in because I didn’t have the facilities, so every piece had to be perfect from start to finish, which was a real brain ache. But what you’ve got is that intensity. You can hear it on the track; you can hear that it’s a performance.”

The Lord’s Seat is taken from the album Troubadour and reproduced here by kind permission of Gordon Giltrap