The New Acoustic Generation
From bluegrass virtuoso to fun-loving fingerstylist, from one-man band to dynamic duo, from YouTuber to stringslapper – TG salutes more of the best acoustic players in the world right now...
Words Chris Bird / Jonny Scaramanga / Jonathan Horsley Grant Moon / Amit Sharma
Photo Jesse Wild
Gabriella Quevedo
The YouTube crowd-pleaser
With an undeniable ear for a hit and unfailing rhythmic accuracy, Gabriella deliver some of the most crowd-pleasing repertoire of any acoustic YouTuber.
Unsurprisingly for a Swede, she’s done a number of reworked ABBA tunes, but her arrangements of Nothing Else Matters, Another Brick InThe Wall, and HereComes The Sunhave all done big numbers.
She got chosen to play on stage with Tommy Emmanuel when she was just 15, and was not upstaged. Like Emmanuel, she has a gift for sounding like several guitarists playing at once.
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Focus on the melody when tackling classic covers – it’s the most important part for most listeners and you can build the harmony around it
Although she’s famous for covers, her gift for interpretation makes her an artist in her own right, and she nails dynamics and nuances. Her timing is killer – metronomic without being robotic – but it’s the way she keeps focus on the melody that makes her so effective.
She’ll choose chord voicings that keep the melody note at the top, so it doesn’t get buried. Her talent for arrangement shows an original musical mind at work.
In late 2019, she released Remember andLast Time, her first two original compositions. Although she’s been on the scene for 10 years, she’s still only 24, and she is still reaching her potential.
“Gabriella was chosen to play on stage with Tommy Emmanuel at just 15”
Kaki King
The groundbreaking traditionalist
To think of Kaki King as just an acoustic guitar player is to sell her art short. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her soundtrack to Sean Penn’s IntoTheWild. King’s groundbreaking theatre production The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body took her technically gifted playing style to the stage, using visual arts to elevate the acoustic’s possibilities.
She is also an entrepreneur/inventor, creating the Passerelle, a metallic, moveable second bridge that can be used to wholly rethink what’s possible from the guitar. When armed only with her signature Ovation 1581-KK acoustic and her imagination, she epitomises the contemporary acoustic player, using a cornucopia of alternate tunings, percussive rhythms and a keen ear for dynamics.
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Kaki has used acrylic overlays on her fingernails for greater picking clarity. Greats like John Renbourn and Clive Carroll have done the same