"Sandy Bells" by John Renbourn

Friends:

Here's something a little different. As some of you know, sometimes the breeze catches my ear and it whispers something that I may want to consider for the next post. This one came to me as a random member suggestion last month. I was already in a Renbourn mood, planning on doing another soon, and this just struck me as something fun to look at.

I never heard of the tune "Sandy Bells" prior to this suggestion. This struck me as odd, I'm not an expert on Renbourn's catalog but I know it well enough that I'd be surprised to come across a title I've never listened to. It quickly became obvious that I'd never heard this because he never actually recorded it. He also never even performed it as far as I could find. The only reference to this piece was in a book published in 1994 titled Guitar Styles! / Folk / John Renbourn. 

I was able to quickly have a copy delivered from Italy and started digging into it. The first question I had was whether the fingerings suggested were an accurate reflection of Renbourn's technique or whether they were added by the author. Scanning through some of the pieces revealed that many of the fingerings looked like perfectly acceptable ways to play the piece, many instances were exactly as John played them in particular songs, and others deviated somewhat from his performances. It became apparent that in many instances a slightly more "classical" approach was being used to finger particular parts of songs. There is not much wrong with this, but most of you know my inability to overlook how the artist would have originally played their works.

I reached out to the author of the book, a completely delightful fellow named Michael Stimpson, then a classical guitar player and now a British composer. His recollection was the scores would have likely come from John, but in most instances the added editing was his own. This all made perfect sense.

At this point I was tasked with reinterpreting the sheet music in a manner that would have hopefully more carefully reflected John's performance practice. The good news is since John appears to have never played this one, we have a lot of flexibility in our interpretation.

In my score I used all of the articulations that were suggested in the original, even those that I do not believe to jive with how I think John would have played this. You will hear a few differences in my YouTube performance and in the lesson video I go over all of the subtle changes I made to the piece. Though subtle, I added what I believe are a few nods to Renbourn and Jansch alike.

I believe the text introducing the piece to be John's words, so I have included them here:

This is the name of a fine old pub in Edinburgh, notorious as a meeting place for guitar players during the folk revival. One of the standard folk guitar keys is A minor, and this tune contains a number of chord shapes and picking patterns that crop up in 'bluesy' contemporary playing. The definitive piece of this type is Davey Graham's 'Anji' which really set the ball rolling in Britain in the early sixties.

This one is in standard tuning and John indicates it is to be played with a capo on the second fret. It is a fairly simple piece in the key of A minor, but with voicings that I have never considered when playing in the key. I hope most of you find this one as enjoyable as I did.

The video lesson is here: https://youtu.be/NHmDAIbsZNU

The score is attached below

We'll be back with a huge post next month!