Acoustic Magazine February 2016 Vorige editie

Music today can sometimes be the victim of overproduction. It can feel as if the artist and producer are trying too hard, meaning beautiful, melodic songs can get swamped with layers of instrumentation and, somewhere along the line, the beauty of the original song gets buried. It has been said that the test of a great song is to see if it still stands up when played with just an acoustic guitar as an accompaniment.
We recently had this proved to us when we enjoyed a day with our cover artist, Gabrielle Aplin. The first time I saw Gabrielle she was working for Martin Guitars’ UK distributor, Westside Distribution, at our London Acoustic Guitar Show back in 2012. Though her audience was small, the strength of her songs, which were performed with just a Martin guitar, meant that, for me at least, she stole the show. Over the course of the following couple of years her career rightly and deservedly took off. Many of you will recall that she came back to the show in 2014, this time to play the main stage. Again, she played with no effects, no loops and no backing tracks. The entire performance consisted of just her mesmerising voice and a Martin guitar.
When spending time with her at her Brighton home recently, she again proved that haunting, spine-tingling songs do not need masses of studio production or instrumentation. Fortunately for us all, we had a videographer with us for the encounter.
Aside from Gabrielle Aplin’s feature article, look out for our UK exclusive review of the Tradition 1 Performer from Riversong Guitars. You may have read in our feature in the last issue how, under the direction of Mike Miltimore, Riversong has thrown away the guitar-building rule book and is set to challenge our preconceptions of how acoustic guitars are constructed and look. It all makes for very interesting reading!