Inspired by an earlier thread about Sungha Jung. Those of you familiar with the term, skip down a bit. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term - “fingerstyle” is a curious piece of nomenclature. It doesn’t really pin down the style of the music, because it can be folk, rock, jazz, country, blues or any hybrid of the lot. It doesn’t pin down the instrument because it can be a nylon-stringed classical guitar, a steel-stringed acoustic guitar, an electric or some customized Guitar Shaped Object with extra strings. All the term does describe is the use of the fingers of the strumming hand as opposed to using a flat pick. But even this is deceiving, as some players use just bare fingers (with or without long fingernails), some use a thumbpick, some use a thumbpick and fingerpicks, some use a flat pick held between thumb and index fingers while using the middle, ring and pinky fingers.
For the particularly particular, Classical and Flamenco are fingerstyle styles, but they’re not usually included because they have their own ‘stream’ of history and heroes.
Fingerstyle usually emphasizes the effect of one guitar playing simultaneous bass, chord and melody lines, often with great rhythmic interplay between lines. It is based on extending the sonic palette of the solo instruments through tapping, hammering, pulling, sliding.
And for those of you already familiar with fingerstyle, may I suggest we share some clips from musicians we particularly admire?
Here are my first three recommendations
Chet Atkins One of the originators of the style - sorry it’s not a visual clip of him playing that piece. They do exist, but I’m assuming there are copyright issues.
Jason Crawford a local Toronto guitar hero - he’s been a subway musician for the last couple of years.
Bruce Cockburn One of his earliest solo sucesses.
Any other favourites out there?