Only Solitude I adore this piece of music from Gustavo Santaolalla’s Monsterland soundtrack. So creative, so beautiful. While it’s actually played on a violin, I reimagined it as a solo guitar piece in Santaolalla’s signature, minimalist style. You might also like to play… The Haunting […]

Interstellar This must be Hans Zimmer’s greatest complete score. While Man of Steel, The Dark Knight, and Gladiator have their selections — the entire score of Interstellar is wondrous and immensely listenable. This piece is known as, First Step and Day One from the soundtrack. […]

A Christmas Carol (2019) “What was the purpose of our gross accumulation?” – Jacob Marley A Christmas Carol (2019) is a British miniseries (starring Guy Pearce) based on the 1843 novella of the same name by Charles Dickens. It aired on FX in the United […]

Daily Battles Motherless Brooklyn is a 2019 American neo-noir crime film written, produced and directed by Edward Norton. It’s based on the 1999 novel (of the same name) by Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn is set in New York City in 1957. The film follows a […]

Isolated System I love this instrumental piece by Muse. It worked perfectly as the theme song for Brad Pitt’s World War Z in 2013. Using Isolated System was a brilliant stroke. Another great example of an outsourced song becoming a theme is Tubular Bells from […]

Bird Box I just watched Bird Box (Netflix) and I loved it. Obviously the film draws comparisons to The Happening and A Quiet Place but it still feels highly original. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross bring the melancholy and creeping dread with their typical sound. […]

Photo: Rachael Crowe | Unsplash Revelation Free download on SoundCloud. I love this song. Revelation is so minimalist — specifically the “vinyl” version from the Boy Erased soundtrack. I used the vinyl version as a template for this guitar arrangement. The power of Revelation is in it’s […]

Leave No Trace Listening is a form of practice. Free MP3 Download on SoundCloud. Leave No Trace is about a father (Ben Foster) and daughter who live an off-the-grid existence in a National Forest Park/nature preserve near Portland, Oregon. They rarely making contact with the […]

Opening If you’ve been a reading my blog for any length of time, it’s not hard to figure out that I’m a Gustavo Santaolalla superfan. It all started with the Brokeback Mountain score: acoustic guitar, empty space, minimalism. I had never heard anything like it.  […]

Chichina I performed Chichina this blog about 7 years ago, however my audio quality was dated and not up to my current standard. I’ve been on a quest to redo the songs that inspire me to play guitar, and Gustavo Santaolalla’s Chichina is one of […]

Photo by Max Zed | Unsplash Visions of Gideon Visions of Gideon is a song by the New York based multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, Sufjan Stevens. His songs from the film, Call Me By Your Name are atmospheric and layered. The soundtrack also features avant-garde classical […]

Lady Bird The Lady Bird soundtrack is from multi-instrumentalist composer Jon Brion. Brion’s niche is in creating “unsentimental” scores that fit hand in glove with indie drama/comedies. The music bounces along — like a Beatles song without vocals — never interfering with the scene. Contrast […]