The Firth of Lorn by Gary Ryan is a beautiful piece in Trinity College London’s Grade 3 syllabus for guitar.

The piece is highly reminiscent of traditional Scottish music, with an evocative melody and a handful of lingering suspended chords at key cadencial points. This is sure to be a favourite among guitarists who seek out pretty melodies and emotionally engaging music.

While the piece of music has a clear melody throughout, it is actually based around a few key chord shapes. If you want to play this piece well, I’d recommend learning the chord shapes first before working out the melody separately. Not only will this help you to feel more secure when playing, you’ll also benefit from improving your chord vocabulary (something classical guitarists are notoriously guilty of neglecting!). Chords are an important part of playing the classical guitar, check out this lesson to see why.

Chord shapes in ‘The Firth of Lorn’:

As well as mastering the chord shapes, you’ll also want to spend some time figuring out the best right hand fingering. This piece alternates between pretty bits of melody and short arpeggiated chords.

Remember to alternate for the melodic passages (blue section in example), and use one finger per string for the arpeggios (red section in example).

There is plenty of scope for the guitarist to explore the use of rubato, tonal colour and dynamic shaping. This piece can be interpreted in many different ways, making it a fantastic piece for musical development (hence finding it’s way onto Trinity College London’s Grade 3 syllabus for guitar). You can also find a few places to add a short breath, as marked in the score at the ends of phrases. This sounds very effective and is in keeping with the style of the piece. Just be careful to make sure this is done tastefully and stylistically. Don’t pause for too long, too often as this will break up the flow of the piece.

Before you begin adding in rubato, mark in your phrases. You’ll find that the most natural way to shape the phrase using rubato is to either begin with a little accelerando from a slow tempo up to the desired tempo, or to simply begin each phrase at the desired tempo. As you approach the end of phrase, experiment with ritenuto (holding back a little), or a full blown ralllentando (slowing down more noticeably).

When the chord changes, you might notice that the music feels a little different. If you notice that the music feels somehow different in character when you play certain chords, practice changing the tonal colour to suit. You may find it sounds better moving to a more ponticello or tasto position at these points. Subtle changes to the tonal colour can sound really effective in this piece, so keep listening for places where you might include this.

As far as dynamics are concerned, a simple treatment of the phrases is all that’s needed. If you’re new to dynamic phrasing, try increasing the volume when the melody goes up in pitch and decrease the volume when the pitch of the melody goes down. This is usually a good way to get started. You can then look for any places where you may want to do something a little different. Remember, the dynamics on the score are only a starting point. A brief diminuendo towards the end of the phrase is quite effective in this piece, as marked on the score in various places.

If you like this piece, you’ll also enjoy listening to:

• Bonnie, Bonnie Banks O Loch Lomond (arr. David Russell)
• Home (Andrew York)