Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

Monthly Free Lesson — June 2020

“Flowers of Edinburgh”

Arranged by Orrin Star

Download PDF | Download mp3 | Download Alternate Part A mp3

This month we have released a new book in our Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Archive Series. This new release is titled The Big Book of Celtic Tunes and features all of the articles that were presented during our 20 years of publication that cover the topic of Irish, Scottish, English, or British Isles tunes. So, for this month’s lesson we decided to post an excerpt from the new book. The tune is “Flowers of Edinburgh” and is presented here as it was arranged and presented by Orrin Star in our January/February 2004 issue.

Here is what Orrin had to say about his arrangement in that article:

This lilting, loping tune with a decidedly Celtic flavor is a recent favorite. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about this arrangement is the choice to “float” some of the A part’s melody lines: to employ select higher fret positions in combination with open strings rather than playing it more in a more linear way.

Why do this? Because the extra sustain or ring on certain notes that “floating” provides can be more pleasing than playing it straight. Why did I choose those particular notes to float and not others? Because I thought it sounded best that way. Floating—like crosspicking—is not an all-or-nothing proposition; sometimes it works best in cameo rather than as full Monty.

To take you behind the scenes here at Star Brain Ranch, when I first started arranging this tune I tried floating the entire A part, and it actually worked (sometimes it doesn’t) and sounded pretty good. But I ultimately decided that I preferred the more grounded feel of a mostly-first-position approach to the tune. Yet I’m going to include a tab for the floated A part so that you can experience floating in its purest form and also get a sense of how it influenced my arrangement even though I chose to include only a small piece of it.