I briefly met this composer at a guitar festival last summer. A few months later I heard a few pieces of his in a guitar recital. Intrigued, I looked them up on the composer’s website. There I found he had composed 14 studies based on African American spirituals. Liked them so much that I decided to record them all. Here’s the finished complete recording.



The first two pieces are guitar trios—I overdubbed those. The rest are solos. (The closing credits list the recording gear.)

It would’ve been nice had I included videos of my playing. But videos are time-consuming to make. So this is an audio only recording. Took me a while to finish—I learn new stuff slowly, and I had to work through a litany of broken nails. (Broken nails are a disaster for classical guitarists.) Still, I’m pleased with the result. These pieces aren’t yet well known to classical guitarists. But I think the composer hit a home run.

Thanks much for sharing these, Tom!

The lyrics overlays were sufficient and effective—except now, I’m also hoping someday for a vocals + guitar version.


Keep putting them out,

Ray “short nails” H.

Trust me, you really don’t want to hear me sing.

Since posting this recording, I’ve twice reposted it. I needed to tweak it so that the gain level among all 14 pieces was reasonably consistent. Should’ve done that before posting it the first time. But I tend to get impatient when getting close to a project’s end.

By the way, there’s an Easter egg here that’s of interest to audio engineers. On one of the pieces, I used a borrowed AEA R84. Kudos if you can figure out which one.