guitar meditation | Judy Unger Music

I’ve chosen this title for medleys of my newest song creations because my songs truly express deep emotions from my heart. Opening up to share my feelings has been incredibly healing.

When I first rediscovered my music in 2010, I hired other musicians and that resulted in many beautiful creations. But for the past year, I have enjoyed creating new arrangements. The older versions of my songs are lovely, but many of them were too fast. After playing live performances now for several years, I feel that something more authentic to how I actually play the song is best.

I have a wonderful pianist, Devin Farney, whom I am working with. Unlike years ago, I am directly involved with adding instrumentation to my songs.

I’ve worked with Devin for almost four years now. We added piano to my guitar tracks, and Devin helped created solo piano versions of all 52 of my songs. Everything together has been done remotely until a few weeks ago. It was such a lovely surprise when Devin told me he would be in Los Angeles and we could have an in-person session.

It was a thrill and hearing him play on his keyboard while sitting next to me was indescribable. Before he left, my son took a picture of us together.

Guitar is always the basis for my recordings. I’ve been exploring ways to add additional guitar parts. It has been a joy experimenting with harmonics and nylon guitar riffs. There’s little technical skill involved, but improvising while I play can be magical. This has all been a new experience that I’m quite proud of!

Once the guitar parts are finished, I add my vocal line and then work with Devin on instrument additions. It’s incredibly fun for me to edit everything and decide upon the sounds and placement. I am no longer a musical bystander for my songs’ arrangements.

I plan to continue working on more songs, but at this time I am releasing medleys of them. Insight Timer is a wonderful platform, and they are free to listen to. The first two medleys are named “Guitar Songs From My Heart” and “Songs From My Heart.”

The eight songs for this first medley are: Alabaster Seashell, You Were There, Memory of Love, Watching You Grow, The Key, Someone to Love You, Set You Free, and Take My Hand.

Later on, I’ll be sharing the arrangements – with and without vocals. I’m so thankful for my passion and appreciate my wonderful listeners!

I plan to continue working on more songs (hence the #1), but clicking on the image below is a link to my Insight Timer page with the medley list, as well as links:

Clicking on this image is a link to hear my piece on Insight Timer.

The 4-chord melody for Guitar Tides was composed last year. I put it aside when I couldn’t seem to expand it beyond those chords. Instead, I found myself energized to work on “Autumn Hope” so I discarded those 4 chords in the key of A.

Once “Autumn Hope” was finished, I wondered whether I had another guitar instrumental in me. I went back to play those 4 chords and felt inspired to add a few more bars. As more and more passages were revealed, the song expanded beautifully. I didn’t have any idea what to name it, so for 6 months, I called it my “new piece in the key of A.”

It took patience for me to decide when my song was truly finished. Eventually, it felt complete and I recorded the main guitar part in August. But it still wasn’t done. I wanted to explore guitar additions. In the past, my other guitar part usually consisted of light finger-picking and an occasional soft strum.

I went ahead and recorded those additions by transposing and using a capo, but then I improvised and came up with some catchy lead guitar melodies. With my last piece “Autumn Hope,” I had discovered the beauty of adding harmonics, so I recorded lots of tracks with those, as well.

Culling the best parts from all the additional guitar recordings was a monumental editing task. But I loved it! The finished piece even benefited from a creative introduction, which had the guitar additions playing first without the main guitar. I faded it in and the result was fun. And of course, once I chose the name “Guitar Tides” – I thought adding some ocean sounds for the intro and the outtro would be soothing.

I had a lovely beach outing this past summer, which inspired me to take some pictures of my guitar on the sand. My good friend, Joni, accompanied me and also took some pictures of me. Everything came together and I’m so happy that I have finished and released my latest guitar creation.

I am planning to add a portion of Guitar Tides to an existing track named “Healing Guitar Dreams.” The moon on my song cover is very dreamy. I’m going to use a different view and change the name of that track to “Guitar Dreams.” It will consist of 5 guitar songs. That will be coming soon.