Be Still My Heart

David Kilpatrick

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A new song in the manner of lutenists of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean courts played on a Lowden S35C guitar

singer songwriter acoustic folk british guitarist song celtic traditional fingerstyle scottish scotland guitar kelso

David Kilpatrick

Solo singer-songwriter and tunesmith playing British fingerstyle steel and nylon string guitar, and historic instruments. Scots and Irish influences.

I've been writing and playing songs and tunes since teenage years in folk clubs and pubs. I co-organise the Kelso Friday night live music sessions at the Cross Keys (hosted singaround 7.45-10pm) and Cobbles Inn (10-12pm open mic with The Cobbles Band) with the help of many friends. All welcome! Visit us at kelsofolkandlive co uk. It is worth clicking on the tab because the sound quality of my tracks is far higher than the auto player on this page. Many can be streamed or downloaded at 320KBps and the enhancement for solo guitar/voice far exceeds the benefit you get for highly compressed band recordings. My recordings are full dynamic, not compressed. Just select Hi-Fi for the first song, and an MP3 high bitrate window will open - you will still get a sequence of songs. Most of my downloads are free, but some 320KBps tracks are paid-for. These are selected because they make up my main instrumental album. I now have a YouTube page and have started doing some video recordings for fun: @daviddkilpatrick I have mainly played Lowden guitars since 1999. I current play a 1985 S5FN (nylon string), 1986 S22 (jumbo O-size mahogany/cedar), and 1995 S32 (small body rosewood/spruce). I also play my own 1997-built Martin 'kit' Grand Auditorium rosewood/spruce, a Sigma OM-T, Furch Little Jane, Tacoma Papoose, Guild 8-string baritone, Vintage V880 parlour guitar and Gordon Giltrap signature model, a Troubadour mahogany/spruce classical and an Adam Black 12-string. And that's just the guitars... also viola, mandolin, mandola, waldzither, bouzouki, Appalachian dulcimer, low D whistle, keyboards.

Song Info

Genre

Acoustic • Acoustic Guitar

Charts

Peak #15

Peak in subgenre #4

Author

David Kilpatrick

Rights

David Kilpatrick 2005

Uploaded

May 02, 2015

Track Files

MP3

MP3 5.0 MB • 160 kbps • 4:22

Story behind the song

There are two reasons for this recording. The song, Be Still My Heart, came from experiments with just intonation, vocal pitch and the equal temperament of modern guitars; it is sung entirely on a single note, but the changes in intervals produced by the guitar part alter this to imply the presence of melody. I am not the best person to sing this and it really requires a properly trained tenor singer better able to express the tiny variations in the absolute pitch of the single note (and, indeed, to hit it and hold it!).

The guitar obligato (the improvised instrumental middle section) consists of many stock phrases I have been working on for the last year or two, gradually. While I would be very unlikely to repeat this exactly, the elements I use to create it are standard patterns or phrases. These in turn are freely altered rythmically and have many variants of their own. It is unrehearsed, but all the parts which make up the solo are part of a 'language' for this type of music.

My new Lowden S35C guitar is recorded here for the first time since George Lowden returned it with a reprofiled neck and some further refinement to nut and saddle. It is strung with D'Addario EXP 12-53 gauge 80/20 bronze strings, 2 days old, and has been tuned carefully using my normal DADGBE tuning with emphasis on very accurate D octaves. The recording uses bare fingers and nails, with single AKG C3000B microphone about two feet away, and is a single take via a small Yamaha mixer into a Roland VS880-EX hard disk recorder. Reverb and compressor/limiter has been applied to the mono track, which is split into 90/90 degree panned stereo to use the stereo aspect of the reverb signal. The reverb is a little stronger than I normally use to simulate the conditions where this song would be at its best - a church or large Jacobean hall.

The words are improvised quickly as well and suggested improvements can be made: in the second line 'Had I but one note left of song' creates a fuller rhyme-scheme.

Lyrics

Be still my heart, beat not so fast
Lest this one beat should be thy last
Had I but one note left to sing
I would sing her name ever on
This my one note, this beat your last
Be still my heart, beat not so fast!

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