“Offerings: Guitar Meditations” - Clarelynn Rose
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
There’s a certain kind of record that doesn’t just play in the background—it changes the background. It shifts the air in the room, slows your breathing, and makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a softer world. Clarelynn Rose’s Offerings: Guitar Meditations is exactly that kind of record. Released on August 8, 2015, it’s a collection of deeply intimate, acoustic guitar pieces designed to be more than music—they’re invitations to stillness.
Clarelynn, hailing from Green Cove Springs, Florida, didn’t set out to make a “career move” with this album. In fact, the whole project began as a private practice—a form of personal meditation that happened to involve a guitar. But thanks to some gentle nudges from friends and mentors, she decided these meditative pieces deserved to be shared.
Her influences are an eclectic, inspiring bunch: Alex de Grassi for his intricate, painterly approach to guitar; Joni Mitchell for her fearless individuality and mastery of alternate tunings; and John Renbourn, who offered encouragement that tipped this from private ritual into public offering. There’s even a charming bit of artistic barter in the story—Clarelynn once traded dog-sitting for Alex de Grassi in exchange for feedback on her music, a deal that brought extra sparkle and texture to her compositions.
The album was recorded at Laughing Coyote Studios in Redwood Valley, California, by Dave Martin—a spot that’s also been home to de Grassi’s own recordings. Clarelynn worked with warm, vintage Shure mics that give every track a velvety intimacy, as if you’re sitting right there in the room with her guitar in your lap. There’s no overproduction here, no studio tricks—just wood, strings, and the artist’s touch.
From the first notes, Offerings feels like it’s less about impressing you and more about centering you. Tracks like “King Yama’s Mirror” carry a quiet urgency—an unspoken reminder that the time to turn inward, to practice, to be present, is now. In contrast, “Redstone” is all softness and tenderness, a love letter in six strings where you can literally feel the heartbeat she’s woven into the playing.
What’s remarkable about Clarelynn’s style is that it isn’t built on formal training. She’s never taken lessons, never memorized chord charts, and doesn’t even think in terms of note names. Instead, she remembers her alternate tunings by the images they evoke—“Waterbird tuning” being one example. Her music isn’t so much constructed as it is felt, grounded in shapes, textures, and an “internal sense of movement” she calls Guitar Dharma.
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
And that term isn’t just poetic branding—Clarelynn is a dedicated Buddhist practitioner, and she sees her music as part of that path. One of her proudest moments came when someone told her that her first album had reached a Buddhist nun in the Himalayas. The nun said, “This music makes me feel inside very quiet, just like when I do puja.” That kind of feedback became the seed for Offerings, an album specifically made of her gentlest, most meditative pieces.
This isn’t a record you throw on while rushing around or half-listening. It’s the kind of album that asks you to pause. To sit by a window with a cup of tea. To put your phone in another room. To remember something from your childhood you thought you’d forgotten. Clarelynn herself says she hopes people will listen and feel, “Ah – I remember,” with a hand on their heart.
In a world that pushes noise, speed, and constant stimulation, Offerings: Guitar Meditations feels like the opposite—a deliberate act of slowing down.
Put simply, Clarelynn Rose hasn’t just made an album—she’s made a space. One you can step into anytime you need to breathe, reflect, or reconnect with the quiet parts of yourself. And these days, that might be the most generous offering of all.
“Offerings: Guitar Meditations” is available now on all major streaming platforms
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