A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections.
Les Barker is an English poet, who is famous for his comedic poetry and parodies of popular songs, but he has also produced some very serious thought-provoking written works.
A guitar solo is a melodic passage, instrumental section, or entire piece of music, pre-written to be played on a classical guitar, electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular music such as blues, swing, jazz, jazz fusion, rock and metal, guitar solos often contain virtuoso techniques and varying degrees of improvisation. Guitar solos on classical guitar, which are typically written in musical notation, are also used in classical music forms such as chamber music and concertos.
Isaac Guillory was an American folk guitarist.
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking. The term "fingerstyle" is something of a misnomer, since it is present in several different genres and styles of music—but mostly, because it involves a completely different technique, not just a "style" of playing, especially for the guitarist's picking/plucking hand. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking except in classical guitar circles, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. The terms "fingerstyle" and "fingerpicking" also applied to similar string instruments such as the banjo.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs and Strength in Numbers.
Derek Bermel is an American composer, clarinetist and conductor whose music blends various facets of world music, funk and jazz with largely classical performing forces and musical vocabulary. He is the recipient of various awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy in Rome's Rome Prize awarded to artists for a year-long residency in Rome.
Oliver Fartach-Naini is a German guitarist living in Australia where he teaches at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide. He is regularly involved in organising festivals and performing classical guitar for the public.
Gerald Garcia is a British classical guitarist and composer.
William Coulter is an American Celtic guitarist, performer, recording artist, and teacher. Since 1981 he has explored the world of traditional music as a soloist with ensembles including Isle of Skye, Orison, and the Coulter-Phillips Ensemble.
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records. He is known for his instructional videos and Vestapol line of videos and DVDs.
Huw Warren is a Welsh jazz pianist and composer whose work crosses several genres. He is known as co-leader and founder of the jazz quartet Perfect Houseplants.
Neil Andrew Carter is an English musician who has worked in diverse genres throughout his career. Classically trained, he became a professional rock musician at the age of 17 and initially had his first "mainstream" experience with singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan. He subsequently played guitar and keyboard for the hard rock band UFO, blues rock guitarist Gary Moore, and Wild Horses. He is credited for co-writing a number of Gary Moore's songs including the worldwide hit "Empty Rooms". At 30 he left the rock world and developed a different career as both teacher of woodwind and as an ABRSM examiner. 2010 saw an unexpected return to rock with Gary Moore, playing festivals across Europe and a tour of Ukraine and Russia. Future tours and a Celtic rock album were to follow but this was curtailed by the death of Gary Moore in February 2011.
John Feeley an Irish classical guitarist, and a teacher and editor of guitar music.
Frantz Casseus was a Haitian-American guitarist and composer.
Classical guitar pedagogy is a collection of ideas, structures and patterns that are commonly used in teaching guitar. These standards include a variety of techniques and songs that incorporate these techniques to develop a player's abilities.
Jerry Silverman is an American folksinger, guitar teacher and author of music books. He has had over 200 books published, which have sold in the millions, including folk song collections, anthologies and method books for the guitar, banjo and fiddle. He has taught guitar to hundreds of students. He has presented concerts and lectures at schools, universities and concert halls in the U.S. and abroad.
Alan Bullard is a British composer, known mainly for his choral and educational music. His compositions are regularly performed and broadcast worldwide, and they appear on a number of CDs.
Stephen Goss is a Welsh composer, guitarist and academic. His compositional output includes orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces. His music draws freely on a number of styles and genres. He is particularly known for his guitar music, which is widely performed and recorded.
Benjamin Verdery is an American classical guitarist, composer and teacher. Verdery has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, and Wigmore Hall (London). He has played and recorded with a wide range of classical and other musicians, including guitarists William Coulter, Leo Kottke, Paco Peña, Andy Summers and John Williams, vocalist Hermann Prey, composer Anthony Newman, and his wife, flutist Rie Schmidt. New York Times classical music critic Allan Kozinn described Verdery as "one of the guitar’s grand individualists" and "an iconoclastic player," known as much for his devotion to new music and transcriptions of Jimi Hendrix songs as for inventive interpretations of Bach. As of 2021, Verdery had released 19 albums and been featured on several others. He has taught at the Yale School of Music since 1985.
