by Raymond Morin

My good friend David Leicht and I are proud to announce Petrifidelity, our new recording of original duets for acoustic guitar. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been composing more and more guitar instrumentals, and we thought it would be a fun challenge to create a package that contained not only the audio for these new songs, but tablature (a system of musical notation, specific to guitar) for each piece.  We were inspired by the old Kicking Mule and Shanachie LPs, many of which came with detailed, hand-lettered tab.  These records and their accompanying notation were invaluable in my learning fingerstyle guitar, and David and I were both excited to contribute to that tradition.

I carefully designed everything about this package myself.  The book is 16 pages, and features tab for each of the 6 songs.  The covers were printed on grey Folia cover stock, and the CD pockets were hand-cut.  Each book was scored, glued, folded and stapled by hand.  Each players’ parts are represented, with David’s appearing on the left and mine on the right.  Lyrics are also included for “No Occupation,” the lone vocal song in the set.  The notation is pretty straightforward, but we’ve also included a legend that defines some of the symbols that appear throughout the book.  I’m no guitar instructor, but in terms of difficulty, I would guess that these pieces qualify as “intermediate” for guitarists familiar with fingerstyle playing.

But even if you’re not a guitarist, we still think you’ll enjoy the music on Petrifidelity.  David and I consider it a major step forward in our composing for the acoustic guitar, and the material ranges from sparse and melodic (“Tanning”, “Capitano”) to pastoral jazz (“June”) to Brit-folk inspired finger-busters (“Work & Worry”) and more.  This package is extremely limited, we’ve made 100 numbered copies, and only 60 of those are going to be on sale (update 10/29 – 11 copies still available!) The book isn’t going out to distributors, and will only be available through Work & Worry and at shows. WordPress (the host of this website) terms of use prohibit me from posting a direct link to buy the book, so if you’d like a copy, please send an email to workandworryguitar@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a reply with all the pertinent info (such as the fact that the CD/Tab book costs $20, postage paid to anywhere in the world, and that the Paypal email is rjmorin@hotmail.com, and that any checks/money orders can be made payable to Raymond Morin, 5201 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh PA 15224).  These are all thing you can look forward to learning, later, via email.

Thanks for reading Work & Worry, and thanks for checking out Petrifidelity.  Please enjoy this stream of  “The D. Putnam Strut”, the lead track from the CD.

David Leicht & Raymond Morin – “The D. Putnam Strut”