What is it?
Southpaw Music is as good a term as any for raft of 250 or so slightly out of kilter songs I have written over the years for solo guitar. There are videos too!
As you will see if you choose to explore this music, I have developed my own out-of -plumb tunings, fingerings and musical vocabulary. It suits me well enough.
It’s not Francisco Tárrega or Joe Pass or Chester and Lester, but its not chopped liver either. I encourage you to decide for yourself where it falls out.
Try a listen, if you enjoy acoustic music. there might be something you will like here!
My Guitar Influences Back in the Day
In general words do not do music much justice, the proof is always in the pudding, so to speak. But here are a few words…
My earlier pieces sound a good deal like Leo Kottke or Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar music in form and execution – with a dollop of Ralph Towner for good measure. These musicians provided the template I used as I taught myself to play guitar and the rudiments of composition. The music in these songs was often an artifact of the particular tuning as much as anything.
In the bye and bye I began to start to hear the little songs in my head and then was faced with challenge of filtering through the limitations afforded by the guitar to make them come to life.
I kinda sorta think that I would have put together a lot of the same tunes had I picked up the piano or learned to score for multiple instruments. The music was out there and my little antennae just tuned into it.
Music by Dead Reckoning
My writing process is pretty instinctive.
The various tunings I use are a vehicle I stumbled into allowing the implication of multiple voices in a simple fashion and supporting more interesting harmonic and melodic content than my limited technical means and untutored approach could effect in the standard EADGBE tuning.
That said, I have derived great pleasure over the years creating and playing this music, and perhaps you will find some small entertainment here too. For me that would be a good result.
Nothing you create is ultimately your own, yet all of it is you. Your imagination, it seems to me, is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence, and is not intrinsic to you, rather it is a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.
Nick Cave
This little website shares some of the tunes I have diddled together over the years.
The Listen To Chris’ Tunes tab has playlists with a selection of my music which you can listen to directly (they are all complete .mp3 file versions, not excerpts).
V1 of the website just has a fraction of the music I have written and recorded, I will post more of it over time if there appears to be any interest in it.
The Watch Chris’s Videos tab features video content I have begun to recently create.
I am the Chief Cook & Bottlewasher
This site is my handiwork, so “that’s it”, as my Uncle Lenny would have said.
It is a bit of ongoing education on my part to master WordPress and the nuances of managing a website. I will do my best to knock the kinks out of the user experience and performance as we go along…
Finally, there is some more of my music and videos posted on my YouTube page: