Vince Gill

quote:

Originally posted by PKFan:
Phil Keaggy

Other honorable mentions:
Allan Holdsworth
Steve Howe
Kerry Livgren
Michael Hedges

Yes, almost forgot Keaggy and Hedges. In my collection of stuff over the years I had a studio video of Phil. I remember him playing the EBow and tunes from "The Wind and the Wheat" like The March of the Clouds..great tune, and also Riverton off the "Getting Closer" album, both of which I really enjoyed. The video showed him playing in many different styles, and great guitarist. Missing a finger from that incident when he was young never held him back!

Additionally on the Windham Hill label Michael Hedges. I should have added him along with William Ackerman in my original post, I had both of their CD's on Windham Hill's label. Great acoustic music to relax by.

^^^^^^^^^^^
Remembering this video from Phil Keaggy reminded me of one of the neatest tools I had on hand at home. A Tascam 6-track digital audio recorder. As I played hours alone at home I would cut my rhythm tracks and then play my leads to them. Often if I was satisfied I'd dub in the lead track and have my own tunes down. It was a wonderful portable piece of gear and very reasonably priced.

Here's an odd tip. I didn't want to clutter another thread recently posted with Molly's D-18 Martin.

By accident in one of the early years I broke one of my picks. It however gave me an idea. I started experimenting on cutting various pick designs and settled on what I would coin my "fang tail" pick. In theory and use what it does, after cutting out an inverted V shape on the tip of the pick would give you a tip that when used to strum on a slight angle across the strings the tip of the pick would strike each string twice giving a 6-string guitar a much fuller 12-string like sound. I would very slightly round off the "fang tips" by sanding slightly. When getting this strumming effect down it would produce some amazing tones on the Martin. You have to dial the strumming effect in just right and tweak it but the results may surprise you. Later I would further experiment with inserting the "fang tip" into a single string and twisting it as in the motion of like...using the tip of the pick to screw in a screw, a twisting motion would cause a "pop" of the string for some very interesting effects. And in time getting this method down, I created some great lead licks for playing the blues solos.

I was always looking to create and tweak tone, whether it was swapping the guitar electronics or the amps, creating unique sounds became a life long endeavor when playing the guitar.

I always used Fender medium picks for trimming the fang tips as they were the most durable and held up without splitting. Sure it is unusual, but I wish that I had some that I made instead of my make-shift photo of what it may look like. I would always bite the top edges of my picks to put a "dimpled edge" in the pick for better grip also. I've known a few of players over the years to gnaw on a pick or two

I have lots of "favorite" guitarists; Steve Howe, Jeff Beck, Ian Anderson, Tommy Emmanuel....but I can't say they are an influence, except for Ian. My acoustic playing can't hold a candle to those guys. I will say, I play more songs by Stephen Still, Neil Young, Beatles (John Lennon) and David Crosby (Ian Anderson too), so they probably more influential.

Julian Bream
Andres Segovia
Leo Kottke
Joe Satriani
Randy Rhoads
Dimebag Darrell
Adrian Legg
Chris Poland
Alex Skolnick
Shawn Lane
Paul Gilbert
Jeff Loomis
Vito Bratta

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
I have lots of "favorite" guitarists; Steve Howe, Jeff Beck, Ian Anderson, Tommy Emmanuel....but I can't say they are an influence, except for Ian. My acoustic playing can't hold a candle to those guys. I will say, I play more songs by Stephen Still, Neil Young, Beatles (John Lennon) and David Crosby (Ian Anderson too), so they probably more influential.

Hey 6guns! Any recent audio clips you'd like to share, have at it! Always enjoyed them. Thats something I never did in the past was keep any recordings, just some odd photos of my gear and a lot of good stories and memories.

Back in the day, this was a special song inasmuch as the tone of Toy Caldwell's Les Paul was almost identical to my LP on page 1 of this thread. Using the rhythm zebra PAF on my guitar it had the closest sounding tone I've ever heard from a LP. I recorded the rhythm track of this song and would play thru the leads with the LP and my blackface Deluxe amp. The tone was almost identical and I could play this song for hours it seemed. Toy had such a sweet sound playing his Les Paul and his signature thumb style picking. You can almost hear the sweet squeal-like sound as his calloused thumb would pluck across his leads. At 37 sec's in and at 2:33 as he picked up his lead, it still sends chills hearing that humbucker's fat tone come on, mine was identical, what an awesome tone. It really wasn't a highly technical lead solo as much as the tone of the LP/amp that created a feeling and certain pleasing sweet special sound, for me anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by just1tym:

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
I have lots of "favorite" guitarists; Steve Howe, Jeff Beck, Ian Anderson, Tommy Emmanuel....but I can't say they are an influence, except for Ian. My acoustic playing can't hold a candle to those guys. I will say, I play more songs by Stephen Still, Neil Young, Beatles (John Lennon) and David Crosby (Ian Anderson too), so they probably more influential.

Hey 6guns! Any recent audio clips you'd like to share, have at it! Always enjoyed them. Thats something I never did in the past was keep any recordings, just some odd photos of my gear and a lot of good stories and memories.

The last stuff I recorded was a few Jethro Tull songs. I have a few other things in mind and hopefully I'll get them done soon.

I checked out Garry Moore on YouTube,
Per: mikeyspizza

Cheese and Crackers!

How has a guy like this been around this long w/o rising to super stardom ?

He does some great music.
I learned something today.

Lots of good players mentioned. I'd like to add Richard Thompson.

From the other side of my play list:

George Benson

John McLaughlin

Kenny Burrell

John Pizzarelli

I'm gonna throw out a few names I haven't seen

Marcus King of the Marcus King Band (and only 23 years old)
John Jeffers of Whiskey Myers
Jason "Rowdy" Cope of The Steel Woods

And I know it was mentioned earlier but forgot how Steve Howe influenced my acoustic music. I forever used harmonics playing stemming from the intro to Roundabout. Here is a great acoustic video displaying his amazing picking,finger work and tone, enjoy! I like it at 12:32 where he breaks into like an upbeat Chet Atkins style guitar..Intersection Blues at 20:34 is great also, you can see he's really enjoying himself!

As mentioned early in this thread, my good friend Mike Dodd played Classical Gas by Mason Williams for me which I later begged him to teach me..he finally gave in and thats where in many ways the acoustic/classical guitar started for me.

Here's a cool treat, Chet Atkins playing Classical Gas for your enjoyment. Atkins was amazing with a guitar, he almost makes it look effortless.