Gilbert Isbin Plays Nick Drake

Guitarist Gilbert Isbin describes his approach on Gilbert Isbin Plays Nick Drake, "When I first heard the music of Nick Drake I was touched, as a guitar player and composer, by his exceptional talent for writing simple yet haunting melodies, accompanied by rich, colorful chord voicings full of clusters, and his technically impressive fingerstyle technique. A Nick Drake melody never starts at the beat that you would expect. Mostly he begins and ends somewhere in the middle of the measure, which gives it a floating, ethereal quality, but which makes it very difficult to write down rhythmically correctly. Moreover, he uses highly unusual tunings. This extensive use of alternate tunings made it possible for him to create a unique chord palette full of soft dissonances. And then there were these unorthodox, brilliantly executed picking patterns -- Nick was certainly an original artist. As it has nevertheless never been my aim to copy Nick, I arranged some of his compositions in my own stylistic approach. Hope you'll love them."