Solo instrumental acoustic guitar thread (with occasional vocal & duo exceptions)

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Starting off with one of Olga's own. A popular experimental guitarist. Maybe not so much that he's the original source of some these innovations, but he brings them all together in one package or career. This is an old video, because a lot of what he puts up now consists of duets with other musicians.
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The original orchestral version is here.

Chopstick, tapping, and Chet Akin's technique for artificial harmonics. The notes in parentheses are where he (temporally?) changes the tuning of those strings while playing. Order is from low to high.

TUNING: C-G-C-E(F)-G(A)-C(A#)

Alex Misko: "Jurassic Park" (John Williams)
 
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Not entirely acoustic, but an unparalleled classic of the "genre" nonetheless--and Derek Bailey even "sings"!

Guitar Solos 2 -- featuring Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Gerry Fitzgerald, and Hans Reichel:


Edit: Damn. Hadn't listened to this record in while and just realized there's actually no acoustic--but Frith is playing a 1936 Gibson K-11, so it's kind of acoustic-ish.
 
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Somewhat more mainstream than that...

Marcin - I know he's good but sometimes comes across as too showy, wanting everyone to know how good he is. But, yeah, he's good.
Two examples:

And then there's the somewhat more subdued Mike Dawes...

Both incredible at what they do.
 
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parmalee said:
Not entirely acoustic, but an unparalleled classic of the "genre" nonetheless--and Derek Bailey even "sings"! [...] Edit: Damn. Hadn't listened to this record in while and just realized there's actually no acoustic--but Frith is playing a 1936 Gibson K-11, so it's kind of acoustic-ish.
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Speaking of prepared guitars... In his last video, Misko stuck a DVD in the strings of his instrument, so Frith may have been one of his many inspirations. (One can take if for granted that Michael Hedges is the common ancestor that all the solo acoustic guys and gals share that emerged in this century that tap, thump, etc.)
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Sarkus said:
Somewhat more mainstream than that...

Marcin - I know he's good but sometimes comes across as too showy, wanting everyone to know how good he is. But, yeah, he's good.
Two examples:
And then there's the somewhat more subdued Mike Dawes...
Both incredible at what they do.
Click to expand...

Yah, the appearance of narcissism or whatever is what Marcin seems to get either criticized or mocked for, but it's really just another brand of showmanship. I like Dawes. He uses so many pedals that (akin to Marcin's equipment effects) one occasionally wonders what his "sound" would be like without them. Those particular performances far less subdued in that modified context, though.
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This video is a year or so old, since probably due to touring she doesn't post much of them anymore. I have no idea what tuning it's in -- might be standard, as some of the glimpsed chord forms look like that.

The original vocal/band version is here.

Josephine Alexandra: "Beat It" (Michael Jackson)
 
C C said:
Speaking of prepared guitars... In his last video, Misko stuck a DVD in the strings of his instrument, so Firth may have been one of his many inspirations. (One can take if for granted that Michael Hedges is the common ancestor that all the solo acoustic guys and gals share that emerged in this century that tap, thump, etc.)
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Have you ever seen Step Across the Border? A couple of German documentarians followed Frith throughout Europe, the US, and Japan from 1988 to 1990. One scene shows Frith shopping at a hardware store in Japan for interesting items to "treat" his guitar with. Lots of excellent guests too, including John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Tim Hodgkinson, Tom Cora, et al.

Hedges was one of the rare guitarists for which you can actually hear a bit of the Morton Feldman influence. Never listened to his stuff with vocals though--is that stuff as divisive as Robbie Basho's curious vocal outings?

Here's Step Across the Border in it's entirety (though further excerpts from the dvd release are worth seeking out as some feature Charles Hayward):

 
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C C said:
Chopstick, tapping, and Chet Akin's technique for artificial harmonics
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A nice stunt would be playing "Chopsticks" with a chopstick. Just saying.

Somewhere I saw one of these guitar innovators playing "Asturias," the Albeniz classic, but can't recall who atm. Will try to find later. It was amazing.
 
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parmalee said:
Hedges was one of the rare guitarists for which you can actually hear a bit of the Morton Feldman influence. Never listened to his stuff with vocals though--is that stuff as divisive as Robbie Basho's curious vocal outings?
Click to expand...

The two Dylan covers are maybe all I ever heard (and not too long ago Dawes did his own instrumental of Hedges' vocal of "All Along the Watchtower"). Though I believe he wrote his own lyrics/songs in one of the albums before he got killed. I may have heard part of one track from the latter years ago, but it was so New-Agey in theme I didn't listen to it all. His singing in AAtW fit well with the mystical feel of his playing, but beyond that I'm kind of ambivalent about his vocals (of course, he was definitely a better singer than Chet Atkins, as is Tommy Emmanuel, too --LOL).
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TheVat said:
Wait, here it is, Marcin, age 16.
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Great example of him playing in the raw or with no digital enhancement and gimmicks. Due to his flamenco roots, Patrzalek is surely an exception to the various contemporary solo guitarists who were inspired by Michael Hedges (William Ackerman once introduced Hedges as "the guitarist from outer space" in a PBS program from circa the mid 1980s).

Of course, throw Tommy Emmanuel in there as a different genealogy, too, since he's from the Chet Atkins lineage (around way before Hedges). And not to leave out the John Fahey, Leo Kottke, etc era.

DADGAD tuning would not exist without Davey Graham, nor the acoustic side of Jimmy Page would have been, sans Graham and certain other British acoustic guitarists circa the late 1950s and 1960s.

Here is Alex Misko also doing it bare (no electronic effects) with a Kurt Cobain cover:

 
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Gave away so many eighties vinyls, but kept Kottke - his "Guitar Music" (where do they come up with these names?) remains for me one of the most listenable (as in, hundreds of times) solo guitar albums. He and Bela Fleck were string benders who both made me want to pick up a guitar or banjo. (Fleck's The Hidden Land album is a tour de force), (OT I guess if this is a guitar thread).
 
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C C said:
Great example of him playing in the raw or with no digital enhancement and gimmicks. Due to his flamenco roots, Patrzalek is surely an exception to the various contemporary solo guitarists who were inspired by Michael Hedges (William Ackerman once introduced Hedges as "the guitarist from outer space" in a PBS program from circa the mid 1980s).

Of course, throw Tommy Emmanuel in there as a different genealogy, too, since he's from the Chet Atkins lineage (around way before Hedges). And not to leave out the John Fahey, Leo Kottke, etc era.

DADGAD tuning would not exist without Davey Graham, nor the acoustic side of Jimmy Page would have been, sans Graham and certain other British acoustic guitarists circa the late 1950s and 1960s.

Here is Alex Misko also doing it bare (no electronic effects) with a Kurt Cobain cover:

Click to expand...
Thought someone had slipped something in my coffee when I first got a look at his guitar fretboard. Not sure what's going on, or why...
 
gmilam said:
Thought someone had slipped something in my coffee when I first got a look at his guitar fretboard. Not sure what's going on, or why...
Click to expand...

Here he is explaining the frets. The video might not embed properly or be severely delayed due to it being one of those smartphone framed shorts. If that happens, use this link to go directly there.

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With respect to #9, Hedges was apparently a more versatile singer than I realized. It's just that his own instrumental compositions were more interesting to me than his vocal covers. I mean, audiences back in the '80s and '90s were so wowed by what he was doing on the fretboard that his excursions into mimicking normal, single performers who sang and simply strummed or finger-picked chords on an acoustic guitar just sort of got neglected (by me, anyway). I wish there were live videos of his most spectacular creativity, but at least the studio recordings will endure forever...

TUNING: D-A-D-G-C-C

Michael Hedges: "Ritual Dance" . . . Note: A video of "Ignition" follows this one (duet version)
 
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