Four Sonatas For Solo Stratocaster or whatever...
Four Sonatas - The Music
I have been working on these for a couple of years now, (like 58 or so). Since we were quarantined for almost 4 months aboard our boat in France during the virus pandemic, I took the opportunity to record them. That quarantine also gave me the environment to "practice" the guitar more than usual, so I was technically up to the level I needed in order to realize the vision I had in mind.
Once I had them recorded ,just single track solo guitar "live" recordings using my Stratocaster guitar with a fairly straight forward traditional "clean" jazz guitar amp sound, I thought them good enough to produce an albums worth. Actually, when in certain moods, I think them most likely my best all around musical output.("Looking at myself I may, may not agree") Ok, so maybe not in the "entertainment" sense per se, but in the artistic sense...maybe.
Honestly I can't say what genre this music would fit into, but I couldn't imagine it "selling" very well anyway. (And selling has never attracted much of my attention.) I can safely say it is instrumental music written on and for solo guitar. But could be easily taken other places. (Like duets, trios, quartets and even small orchestra.)
It only took me 58 years of guitar playing to get here. (50+ yrs. as a full time professional.) Hey...I don't know...Maybe I'm slower than most? But I suspect the reason was my need/desire to study and learn so many different genres. I guess what best describes my life's work would be trying to match my fingers up to my imagination. I would imagine most listeners will hear many of those styles within these compositions.
You can listen and/or download.
(Also check out bonus track#5 below! Stratman/Alien Duet.
Four Sonatas (C)Stan Hirsch 2020
Stratman/Alien Duet Op.1
Actually there is a 5th sonata. It may be places in this album as a bonus to entice more people to purchase the digital download in bulk form of 100 downloads. Yea, I know it's free now but, just wait and someday it could be collectable. (Since there has only been 13 downloads it's definitely on it's way to becoming very rare.) But for now this Secret 5th sonata is yours for free. But,: Warning : It might sound kinda weird in places.I mean like...gee, I never played with an alien before so cut me some slack here.
Ok, so yea...I was just gonna leave this one out altogether because the Aliens licks were really kinda messin' up my stuff. So Sonata #1 is just his/her stuff edited out. But then her/he sent some kind of telepathic (or something) signal to me which in turn inspired me to "draw" this graphic music score of his/her parts. So anyhow, I was feeling kinda bad then and decided to go ahead and include her/his parts in the thing...which makes the song like almost twice as long, but, anyhow maybe I'll have the album art redone to show this "Bonus" song. Maybe?
Oh yea, if you are interested in that alien kind of stuff there is the video (In the Video section) with just the alien music scores and "it's" guitar playing. Just click on the one marked "Alien Strat Sex".