Along the way I wanted to start using the guitar as an independent solo instrument, so I started to experiment with fingerstyle acoustic playing. At that time, there weren't a lot of players around involved in that particular style of playing, so my influences were somewhat limited. If there was one artist I would say was definitely an initial influence on my playing it would be Adrian Legg. But today, fingerstyle acoustic has exploded into a whole new genre of playing, with an entirely new set of techniques and an ever expanding legion of incredible players .

Fingerstyle Acoustic,..

The above pieces are excerpts from an album I will be releasing this summer. They were all played on an Ibanez acoustic guitar, but five of the songs have a different tonal quality than the other two. Tech talk. This is because the Ibanez has a build-in pickup in the bridge, and I bought another pickup that fits across the sound hole, so I ran the two pickups into two different amps and effects processing, and came up with a sound that reminded me of a hammered dulcimer. The album itself is very relaxing.

I mentioned earlier that acoustic finger-style playing had evolved, and in the process had incorporated a whole variety of new techniques, many of them co-oped from other styles of playing, some even from other instruments. For instance, there is finger tapping, which is commonly used in rock soloing, and string slapping, which is used in bass guitar playing all the time. This bit of alcohol fueled exuberance shows some of these techniques albeit, not at the level of proficiency I was capable of. After playing around with these ideas for several hours I finally kicked on an amp and a rack and plugged in.

I didn't bother with any of the settings and it certainly wasn't set up for an acoustic guitar, but after all the wine and the late hour I just didn't care. I hit the start button on the camera, with the mic facing away from the speaker, ran once through the song, turned everything off, and went to bed. It was not a very productive time in my life.