Mally's Traditional Music Store

I decided to write all of these tunes out in the form of a book at the time I recorded them more than ten years ago. I’ve been busy, that’s all. I did write out some of them mostly as they came to be requested by my guitar pupils who have the album, but was only stimulated to finish the whole project after several people at concerts and festivals had asked if tablature or music was available. The process of writing these tunes was not a simple thing, as you will begin to appreciate when you start to play them. It required a good deal of concentrated effort, which means staying for a long time in a quiet room isolated from other disturbances and distractions (i.e. no alcohol, no gorgeous women, no other musicians, potholers or geologists to change the subject); in fact complete boredom so that I had no excuse to do something else. This is, of course, one of the problems of being such a wonderfully popular person; either that or just total lack of organisation. I sometimes feel that six months in stir might have been an advantage, it’s just the threat of lack of alcohol, gorgeous women etc. that puts me off the idea and keeps me street legal.
I did eventually complete the work and here it is. You take over from here and try to learn the tunes on your guitar. I won’t try to kid you into thinking that these arrangements are all easy; a few are but most are not. Be prepared to spend some time on them. One indication is that several of them took me months to bring to a performance level. You should not take quite as long because they are laid out for you here—you are not starting from scratch as I did. I just hope that you will enjoy playing these tunes as much as I do and hope to hear you doing some of them one day.

Living With The Blues : Roger Sutcliffe