My new tenor guitar album - Giotár

A little shameless self-promotion… Many of you know me from years of discussions in the forums here, and playing tunes at sessions around the US and Ireland. If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know that I’ve been thinking about recording for some time, which helps lend me some credibility as a teacher and performer at festivals…

So the time finally came this year. A little over a year ago, Charlie Branch (or “Tony” as many of us know him) moved to Colorado, and he and I hit it off pretty quickly. Charlie is a fantastic accompanist on guitar and bouzouki. And we hatched a plan to record an album with primarily just guitars, because I love the sound of tenor guitar and guitar together. And there aren’t a ton of recordings of Irish traditional music on tenor guitar. (Just a few tracks here and there that I know of, like John Carty and Alec Finn playing together…)

The recording process took us about 5 months from start to finish. The album features a track with Marla Fibish playing mandolin and mandola on some waltzes (track 6). And a few other long-time members here helped out as well - Dirk Mewes on uilleann pipes (track 7) and whistle (track 12), Zina Lee on fiddle on one (track 9), and Kevin Rumery on bouzouki on a track that starts with Kevin’s Dream, which he wrote (track 3). Also my friend Brian Lanni, who is a former champion dancer and teacher (and budding banjo player), dances a hard shoe hornpipe (track 11. The Honeysuckle - which I learned from Brian as well).

So, if you’re at all interested, I’ve added the album to the Recordings section here:
https://thesession.org/recordings/5520

And you can get track previews and purchase CDs or downloads here:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/petestricklercharliebran

The album will also be on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Google Music, etc. very soon. (It has been submitted to all of them, but they each take different amounts of time to process the recording into their systems).

And finally, if for some wacky reason you would like a signed copy, Charlie and I will do that for you. You can send me a private message, and we can figure out the details. 😉

And I just checked - during the time that I wrote this post, the album started showing up on iTunes. The nice thing about iTunes is that it gives you 90 second samples instead of 30, so you can get a better idea of what it sounds like…

Hey Pete, just finished listening to all the previews, it really sounds great, I love the tenor guitar and this is a great opportunity to hear more of it in Irish music.

Thanks, Shane! The tenor guitar is generally my favorite instrument to play, but generally doesn’t cut it in sessions too well. (Although the Herb Taylor tenor that I play has the side “sound port”, which helps!)

Thanks for checking out the samples 🙂

Here’s the iTunes link: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/album/giotar/id1177746190?mt=1&app=music

I agree with you there, my tenor is my go to instrument to play, but when it comes to sessions the banjo will have to do. I’ll definitely be picking up the album after my next pay day 🙂

Congratulations on the album, Pete: sounds great!

Now that there’s an official recording of the tunes out there, how about submitting some of the original compositions to the tunes section? Big Ben, Single Again, The Hip Flask etc. — there’s a good chance they’ll be showing up in sessions now.

Thanks, Jeremy. I will do that 🙂

Hello Reverend, let me just say congratulations!!!! 🙂

Thanks, Kellie! 🙂

I have posted my four original tunes in the tunes section now. And at some point, I will transcribe both North Sea Crossing and Kevin’s Dream and put them in the tunes section as well…

Yes I know and I’ve seen them pretty nice tunes good job!!! 🙂

Great album, Peter - purchased it within seconds of hearing samples! And the advice you gave on the ‘always stumbling’ thread is even more meaningful to me as tenor banjo/guitar is the instrument I (attempt to) play.

Thanks, skinnyman! I hope you enjoy it! Just be forewarned if you are wanting to learn tunes off of it, tracks 3, 4, 6, and 12 were played in non-standard keys using capos for various reasons. You can always tune them down where they belong using one of the software programs that will tune audio files like that.

Nicely done, Pete! Sounds fantastic — I just ordered the CD as an early Christmas present to myself.

I have to confess I haven’t listened to a lot of flatpicked guitar, tenor or otherwise, in Irish music. But after I heard the sound clip samples, I realized that needs to change. My ears are salivating. 🙂

Good. Very good!
I will download a FLAC (iTunes yechh!).

Wayne

Lovely shtuff, Reverend! Good on ya!

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the feedback! 🙂

Hey, thanks for promoting this album. I downloaded it last night and am listening through it. It’s really tastefully done, and the tenor guitar is really well recorded. Great selection of tunes, very well played.

Thanks, dirtyheel!

You’d never know that my basement guest room was converted to a recording studio for 5 months (much to my wife’s chagrin!) 😉

The reason it sounds as good as it does is because I took it to a studio in San Francisco for the final processing. Gary Mankin did the mixing and mastering, and he is really good at building the virtual layout of the instruments and building a “room” around dry recordings. It didn’t hurt that Marla Fibish was a second set of “trad ears” in the studio as well!

The Giotár album has made it onto Spotify, for those of you that use the service. It hasn’t made it to Pandora yet.

Just downloaded it and have been listening and loving it. Great work Pete!