El McMeen

Elmer Ellsworth McMeen, III (known as El McMeen) (born June 3, 1947 in Lewistown, Pennsylvania), is an acoustic steel-string fingerstyle guitarist. His specialty is fingerstyle arrangements of sung or strongly melodic pieces, ranging from the Irish genre, to hymns, gospel tunes and pop music. He has also composed instrumentals for guitar, and has published a book of Irish and Scottish instrumental music that he arranged for classical string trio (violin, viola and cello). That book is called Celtic Treasures for String Trio (Piney Ridge, 2005). He plays and arranges guitar music almost exclusively in the CGDGAD tuning. (That tuning, developed by English guitarist Dave Evans in the 1960s, is similar to a Hawaiian slack-key tuning [CGCGAD] called "C Ni'ihau" tuning.) Acoustic Guitar magazine (Oct. 2001, No. 106) called McMeen "the king of CGDGAD tuning".

McMeen has also arranged many pieces of music in Dropped D tuning (DADGBE), and has written The Art of Dropped D Guitar, published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc. He is profiled in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World.

McMeen practiced law as his primary vocation in New York City for many years, and was a partner in the New York City law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, LLP for 21 years, until his retirement in 2000. After retirement from law, he has pursued music and lay ministry work full-time.

Biography

El McMeen was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania in 1947, and moved with his family to Huntingdon, PA in 1960. Through freshman year in college, he played clarinet as a solo instrument, as well as in band and orchestra settings. He studied piano, and sang in choral groups. He attended public schools in Lewistown and Huntingdon, PA, before attending Mt. Hermon School (now called Northfield Mt. Hermon School), graduating in 1965. He graduated from Harvard College in 1969, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1972, in each case with Honors. He was an Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. He has been married to the former Sheila Taenzler since 1971, and has three sons—Jonathan, Daniel and James—and a daughter, Mary.

McMeen started learning guitar as a senior at Mt. Hermon. At first, he did not approach the guitar primarily as a solo instrument, but used it as accompaniment for his singing. Upon reapplying himself in the early 1980s to the instrument, he encountered what he saw as an incredible breadth of music that one could try to render on guitar. He found himself attracted to Irish and Scottish music, alternative tunings, and different approaches to rendering and arranging music. McMeen’s playing is characterized by melodic emphasis, economy and great beauty of sound. His natural voice-like phrasing and skill at ornamentation and improvisation create a musical flow that gives the listener the impression he is hearing the piece for the first time, each time it is played. His improvisational approach to pieces creates an atmosphere of warm and personal immediacy. Guitar Player Magazine (Vol. 29, No. 2, 1995) referred to his music as "drop-dead gorgeous".

Discography

Solo albums

Compilations

DVD

DVD guitar lessons (Stefan Grossman's guitar workshop)

Books

Guitar

String Trio

Other

Sources

External links

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