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Ralph Towner Licks Ralph Towner Guitar Licks
 Ralph Towner was born in 1940 in Chehalis, Washington. He started playing guitar at the age of 3, studied classical guitar in Vienna and played with classical chamber groups in the 60s.
Ralph Towner is one of the few jazz guitarists who's specialized in acoustic guitar (another one is Charlie Byrd). He's very versatile in terms of genre: he made notable recordings in jazz music, classical music, folk music and world music.
Ralph Towner was one of the founding members of Oregon, a band that plays a mix of folk music, Indian classical music, and free improvisation. Other members of the groups were Collin Walcott, Glen Moore and Paul McCandless.
Ralph Towner made a lot of recordings for ECM, mostly as a leader of duets or trios. He dislikes amplification, preferring to use nylon string guitars. Some of the people he worked with are John Abercrombie, trumpet player Kenny Wheeler, Bill Evans, allan holdsworth and many more.
Recommended listening: Solo Concert (Live)
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1) The following licks form the theme of 'Flutter Step' from the album Oracle, a collaboration between bass player Garry Peacock and Ralph Towner. The theme is brilliant in it's simplicity and has got a great bass line (click the album title to listen to the theme).
The first lick is almost nothing more then an E major arpeggio:
The second lick is more of the same, but with some groovy sounding pull offs and a disharmonic end on the B7b9. After the second lick the first lick is played once again.
The third lick is almost the same as the second, but with a different end.
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