ABILITY RATING
Moderate ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
Key Various Tempo Various
Will improve your…
✓ Altered tunings
✓ Fingerstyle & Travis picking
✓ Percussive stylings
When you’ve mastered your first singalong chords and learned a few classics it’s easy to put the acoustic to one side and focus instead on its seemingly more interesting electric brother. However, delve into the world of acoustic guitar and you’ll discover a mind-boggling array of techniques and approaches that can make it just as interesting (or more so!) than the world of electrics. It’s tempting to think acoustic guitar breaks down to simple strumming, fingerpicking and the occasional lead break but as you’ll discover from these eight legends it can do so much more – from the self-accompanied groove of masters like Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel, the rich detailed playing of James Taylor and Bert Jansch to the pianistic approach of solo guitar master Michael Hedges, there is a lifetime of study and challenges to be had from this simple wooden box.
The players in this feature can be generally categorised as firstly sophisticated accompanists -James Taylor, Bert Jansch, John Martyn, Richard Thompson fall into this category and create heavily embellished parts to accompany their vocals, so much so that many of their pieces could stand alone as instrumentals. Next, those that work as instrumentalists: Tommy Emmanuel, Chet Atkins, Andy McKee and Michael Hedges create dense, melodic works combining basslines, chords and melodies (and even rhythmic accompaniment) simultaneously.
While all these players are masters there are some true pioneers here, with Chet Atkins and Michael Hedges in particular being players who took the acoustic guitar in new directions with their technical innovations. The following examples are just snapshots into
