Judging from the pretty consistent stream of comments and suggestions from you good people on our last article about acoustic guitarists – we decided to create another article including some of the guys who didn’t get a look-in on our last list of great acoustic guitar players who you *may not have heard of*.
Once again let us know your comments, whether we’ve got it right and who we may have missed!
- Justin King
Hailing from Eugene, Oregan Justin has been heralded as being a pioneering guitarist for his instantly recognisable percussive “tapping” style which has been derived and modulated from a variety of influences ranging from Flamenco to Celtic Folk music.
Check out ‘Knock On Wood’ above to check it out. -
Igor Presnyakov
Moscow born Igor studied classical music at a Russian academy going onto graduate as both a guitarist and a ensemble conductor. You can totally hear this in his playing – his guitar has so many harmonic intricacies and rhythmic textures it feels like it could be written for multiple instruments.
He’s a cool guy too because he digs pretty much everything from Reggae to Classical to Heavy Metal \m/
Check out his pretty swish cover of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ above. - Don Ross
Don Ross is one of those guys that incorporates a ton of different influences into his guitar playing style and molds them together seamlessly creating something entirely new. He does a lot of the usual tapping to give some rhythmic drive to his pieces – but his real strength lies in creating seriously catchy hooks which sound simple despite their obvious technical complexity.
Check out ‘Klimbim’ above. - Thomas Leeb
Another big guy in this acoustic game is Thomas Leeb – who refers to his musical style as “the bastard child of acoustic guitar”. His technique involves unusual tapping and strumming methods along with taking a pretty decent amount of influence from his hero Michael Hedges.
Check out his great (and very well filmed, may we add) video for his cover of Pink Floyds ‘Comfortably Numb’. - Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy is a highly regarded Australian virtuoso guitarist who plays insanely energetically – the guy is literally jumping out of his seat when he’s playing. It’s quite something to behold.
Check Tommy out above hammering ‘Classical Gas’ into submission. - Nibs Van Der Spuy
Ex Landscape Prayers dude Nibs is a singer/songwriter and self-proclaimed finger stylist. Not many can say that.
“Nibs is a foremost proponent of the fine weave of cultural sounds that are this country” (Sunday Times, 5 Stars 2010) - Michael Hedges
This guy – we have to admit – you’ve probably heard of. If you’re into New Age, you’ll have definitely have heard of him as he won a Grammy for his album ‘Oracle’. He’s the kind of seed crystal for a lot of the percussive acoustic guitar players around at the moment – he isn’t the originator, but he’s somewhere close.
Check out the live performance of him above playing ‘Aerial Boundaries’ - Mike Dawes
Mike is a 25 year old English Fingerstyle guitar player who cites (surprise, surprise) Michael Hedges as a key influence to his style, technique, method and melody lines. The guys from Gotye also list him as a big influence – which must be nice for him.
Check out his seemingly possible track ‘Impossible’ above. - Erik Mongrain
This dude plays some ridiculously fast harmonics and strumming patterns. He’s a pretty well established Canadian composer – again with the Michael Hedges influence – but this time with more of a classical angle as he cites Bach as being one of his biggest influences. 6 million views on this video too so he’s doing alright. Also cite Metallica, Hendrix and Nirvana as big influences on his work.
Check out ‘AirTap!’ above. - Eric Roche
Eric was an Irish fingerstyle guitarist who was known for his Celtic/classical/Jazz style guitar playing. He was head of guitar at Academy of Contemporary Music and taught Newton Faulkner.
Check out his live performance above.
We hope you enjoyed our list – don’t forget our great range of acoustic songbooks can be found here – including the much loved Little Black Book Of Acoustic Songs!