“I love this guitar so much – if something happened to it, I’d stop playing”: Fingerstyle phenom Laura Snowden on the guitar she can’t live without, how downtuning makes classical guitar “creepy” and what she learned from the great Julian Bream

There’s a profound sense of poetry to This Changing Sky, the debut album from English classical guitarist Laura Snowden.

Its 12 tracks combine her love for spoken word, humming and singing, alongside the stunning fretwork she’s become known for, taking the listener on a theatrical journey like no other.

The tracks were written and recorded predominantly on one guitar, and the music is as honest and pure as it gets, although Laura chose a range of harmonics and tunings, as well as her glass slide, to get the most out of her instrument.

Finding Your Way

For her first solo full-length, Laura documented the journey of a lead character going from a place of disconnection and isolation to somewhere more familiar and positive.

“It’s meant to be about the feeling when you’ve lost your sense of self and the path to finding your way back,” she explains.

“That’s why the album starts in such a dramatic place, eventually finding its way to somewhere more hopeful. I like the mixture of dark and light. Some of the stuff I listen to is disturbing and intense, but I like that because I find it reassuring that other people have the same feelings and experiences that I do.

“At the same time, I wanted that beautiful intimacy of classical guitar, representing the love of family and friends that helps you through darkness.”

The Dragon's Lair by Laura Snowden - YouTube

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The Chosen One 

Lauran’s main guitar has been with her for nearly 20 years and was made by the Oxfordshire-based luthier Christopher Dean.

“I love this guitar so much that sometimes I think if something happened to it, I’d stop playing,” she says. “It probably sounds a bit dramatic, but that’s how much I depend on it. The guitar is so colourful and sweet-sounding, I am incredibly committed to it.

“I often play without amplification because most of the venues I play don’t need it. My main accessory would be the glass slide I use on The Unknown, where I play the guitar on my lap while humming.”

In Harmony

Perhaps one of the most unusual aspects of Laura’s playing is her creativity with natural harmonics – such as playing two at the same time and allowing one to die out, thus creating the effect of a bend, or using her voice to achieve similar results.

“I think I came up with that when I was noodling around,” she tells us. “The classical guitar is very interesting in terms of how it sounds. It offers a lot of interesting resonances. On the song Home I use harmonics to accompany the main melody and add this twinkle that almost sounds like a music box. With the classical, I find it’s best to play to the instrument’s strengths.

“Of course, I could try to play something incredibly triumphant, but I’m not sure if that’s the thing that suits the instrument the most. When I use harmonics, I’m thinking about magical sounds that almost no other instrument could do, things that embrace the magic at the heart of it.”

The Trap by Laura Snowden - YouTube

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Top Of The Class

Laura studied with nylon master Julian Bream, one of classical guitar’s most distinguished minds, who invited her to perform premieres of his newest commissions at Wigmore Hall.

“He taught me a lot about phrasing,” she says. “He’d always tell me to trust my instincts and made me listen to myself more. With classical, you’re often playing other people’s music. Julian helped me sound more instinctive.

“He’d ask me to think about what the music is saying. I’d be looking at a score and he’d say, ‘Get louder here because of all the drama before you get quiet because you’re tired and weary!’ He was full of gestures and meaning. There was an emotional reason behind everything.”

Picking up the Pieces - Laura Snowden and Amy Green - YouTube

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How Laura gets more mileage out of her guitar by using different tunings

“A lot of classical repertoire is in drop D,” she explains. “Sometimes I play in DADGAD, though I didn’t on this album. For Picking Up The Pieces, I tuned my A string down to G.

“Some songs like The Puppet Master and The Unknown are in alternate tunings with four strings tuned differently. Some songs have just the low string tuned down: The Dragon’s Lair goes to C# and The Trap goes even further to B. That low note can make things creepy.”

“Another big influence is a classical guitarist from the olden days called Luise Walker [born in 1910]. Her way of playing was really expressive and personal.”

• This Changing Sky is out now.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.