The Tappers list. 

Hedges / Heavy Wood / Tapping

What kind of music is this anyway?  Everyone seems to need labels.  Some people are simply calling this music Hedges, for the late Michael Hedges.   Michael didn’t actually start this style of music, but he pushed it farther than anyone had conceived, both in terms of the direction of the music and in the shear brilliant technical playing of the instrument. 

There are plenty of styles of music that demand superior technical ability on the guitar, such as Classical, Flamenco, Travis, Finger Style, Blue Grass, Heavy Metal Lead Guitar, etc.  Michael combined elements from all of these as well as new left and right hand techniques invented by him.  His playing was beyond jaw-dropping to other musicians.  Playing solo, he sounded like multiple players.  Sounding like multiple players is part of what defines others who pursue this newest guitar revolution.

Music like this almost never gets any airplay, but the list of players inspired by it is getting longer and longer.  There have been others who have pushed the guitar onto new possibilities, with Hendrix at the top of the list of guitar revolutionaries.  Michael will be remembered as one of them.  

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Don Ross had not heard of Michael back in the day.  Don was a Rocker all through the 70’s.  He would go home, or to the hotel room after a concert, pick up his acoustic guitar, simply experimenting, and unwind.  By the late 80’s and early 90’s, he had developed an astounding catalog of songs using numerous alternate tunings and techniques, pushing the guitar beyond Hendrix, beyond Clapton, and beyond Van Halen.  He started calling his music “Heavy Wood”.  Guitar players started call him “The Wizard”.  He is still the Master Wizard of them all.

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One aspect of this guitar music is the “Tapping”, pushing down on the strings like on the keys of a piano.  This gives a very unusual sound, and allows blazing speed along with separate musical lines.  Some players will actually have the right hand pass the left traveling up the fret board.

Add drumming and tapping on different parts of the guitar for a percussive element, and you start to get the feel of what these people on the Tappers List are about.  Just wait ‘till you see the Chapman Sticks, the Harp Guitars, the Warr Guitars, 5 or 6 String Base, and some of the unusual Classical guitar designs.  Be ready to be blown away by how these people play these "guitars" and by the qualities of the music.

Thanks goes out to YouTube for finally bringing musicians like these to a wider audience, plus to my friends who have been sending me yet more links of musicians to check out, and to add to this list.

Enjoy...

Randy Strom

            “C” Blues
            Peach Pie

 Andy Mckee

            Drifting
            Keys to the Hovercar
            Into the Ocean

             Sayonara

Stefano Barone 

         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDFP_MbvyGc

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWORKg-eXL0

Yet more players...>

Marcel Dadi:

Pete Fingers:
Tommy Emmanuel:
Jacques Stotzem :
Monte Montgomery:
Isaac Guillory :
Pierre Bensusan
Victor Wooten
Fernando Miyata
Phil keaggy:
Andres Godoy:




  Chapman Stick http://www.stick.com