Shayan Afzal

I recently experienced the bliss of attending a finger style guitar gig in Toronto. I am not too big a follower of the genre but I do own all of Andy McKee albums and I have listened to a fair bit of Don Ross music as well. To my surprise the place was packed with talented musicians. Most of them played original instrumentals while a few played instrumental versions of well known songs from the rock music genre. Most of the musicians there used pedals to loop their music but a fair bit didn’t use any such pedals and they definitely outshined the others.

It does take a fair bit of skill to play lead, rhythm, bass as well the vocal sections of a song simultaneously. It’s something I myself have been working on since the last few months. You hardly hear such intricate guitar music on the radio today but that’s a whole other debate. Michael Hedges was one of the few well known musicians who employed such guitar playing techniques coupled with numerous alternate guitar tunings. Unfortunately he is dead now but he did leave an extensive collection of tasteful music. Check him out if you’re into acoustic guitar music.