the greatest acoustic guitar song ever made?

[bigswifty]

I can guarantee you guys will know it

 

[Carl Kolchak]

DIJ's "Symbols of the Sun"?

 

[eggy in a bready]

song to the siren?

 

[downburst82]

 

[MFB]

^ Nothing with Jimmy Fallon in it is capable of being the greatest anything

 

[Chris Bowsman]

 

[spudmunkey]

I can guarantee you guys will know it

I've played for 31 years, and feel stupid because I don't get it.

But if the thread is a question, if I really sat down and thought about, this wouldn't be my submission, but it's the first one that came to mind., and it's still worth watching.

 

[bigswifty]

I've played for 31 years, and feel stupid because I don't get it.

Haha! Well it seems my joke had wings and never quite landed as I expected it to here.. Maybe some might yet get it.

But for sake of what this thread has now become, I will vote between these two as potential candidates for best acoustic song ever.





Of course there's just so many options.. Joni, Neil, CSNY, Croz, Tommy Emmanuel, Pierre Bensusan.. the list goes on.

 

[Mboogie7]

 

[spudmunkey]

The first song that really got my excited about acoustic guitar was also the first time I ever heard anyone incorporating percussion. This video upload is from 2006, but I've seen it years before that...it's just that YouTube didn't exist until 2005....

 

[ArtDecade]

John Butler's Ocean is the one.

 

[mastapimp]

Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries

 

[bigswifty]

Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries

One of my favorite albums ever

 

[efiltsohg]

 

[JimF]

 

[Chris Bowsman]

Townes!

 

[conorreich]

Woodie Guthrie's cover of St James Infirmary?

 

[bostjan]

Considering that for most of history, acoustic guitar was simply known as guitar, and that there are a hundred million different ways to play guitar, and that "best" is totally subjective, I would assume every single person here could give three unique answers.

I am a little surprised no one mentioned "The Claw," though, since it's like the quintessential acoustic fingerpicking song in the USA for people to learn as a benchmark. Like, the day you show up for your guitar lesson and play "The Claw" more or less correctly for your teacher, they will give you a pat on the back and clear your time slot for the next student. I'm, of course, half joking...

There's also Malguena (don't know the ten-key code for n-yay), JS Bach's Bouree in Em, and Classical Gas (which was mentioned) that are also used as sort of benchmarks with a lot of teachers. That's not even getting into genius players who overlapped with electric guitar, like Django.

I know the first time I heard this dude named Brad Jones, I was floored. There was a VHS tape getting passed around of him sitting in a lawn chair at a campground just absolutely tearing his guitar to shreds like it was nothing. Chet Atkins once said Brad was the best fingerpicker. I lost that VHS tape years ago, and I've never seen any of it uploaded to youtube. I remember one song, though, where Brad pushed the low E off the edge of the fretboard and thumbpicked it so it sounded like someone doing marching rolls on a snare drum, while he was playing the bass line and melody still on the other five strings. I once learned his Wizard of Oz medley, and it's probably still the most impressive thing I can play, but I can only play it maybe 15% as clean as he ever did (maybe giving myself too much credit). Like just about everyone mega-talented, no one at the time, other than other guitarists, could even begin to grasp how advanced he was, and he ended up passing away as an obscure name with a couple of off-label CDs and one or two books, none of which I ever saw in stores.

 

[BenjaminW]

My favorite acoustic song of all time is Here Comes the Sun.

Some other honorable mentions I'll include are 316 and 31-91 by Van Halen and Hardline respectively.

 

[ellengtrgrl]

The best acoustic guitar song? Well, that's kind of a personal preference thing. For me, it's down to several songs: