Andy McKee?

Question:I've watched him play on YouTube. I guess he's playing an acoustic guitar but before I enrol myself in a guitar class of a particular style (I've actually decided), I'd like to know if classical guitar training will enable me to play that type of music someday?

I'm curious also, as to how the scores look like? This will probably give me answer. Will it be musical notes or tabs or something else?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I've watched him play on YouTube. I guess he's playing an acoustic guitar but before I enrol myself in a guitar class of a particular style (I've actually decided), I'd like to know if classical guitar training will enable me to play that type of music someday?

I'm curious also, as to how the scores look like? This will probably give me answer. Will it be musical notes or tabs or something else?

Classical guitar lessons will teach you good technique and good posture, and you'd have to kind of 'unlearn' a lot of things classical guitar drills into you if you wanted to learn how to play like Andy McKee.

I'm not classically trained, but I'm a fingerstyle acoustic player and I play a lot of Tommy Emmanuel-style stuff. To play Andy McKee or Michael Hedges-style stuff, you'll definitely want to learn how to fingerpick well, then think about implementing all the body percussion and tapping, etc.

How you go about learning to fingerpick is up to you =) you can teach yourself using fingerstyle guitar books or DVDs or be taught by a good teacher. Once you have the basics under your belt and you're confident about both your left and right-hand techniques and ability, take on the challenge of mastering some of Andy McKee's stuff!

Not all his songs are played with the left arm over the top of the guitar like his "Drifting", he has some purely fingerpicking/strumming songs too, like "For My Father".

Check out the Tommy Emmanuel YouTube link below for some great, great inspiration too, if you're a fan of crazy body percussion. He's really different from McKee or Hedges but I've a feeling you'll like it!

He's playing an acoustic steel string guitar.

But the two-handed tapping techniques that he's using are nothing at all like the fingerpicking techniques you'd learn in a classical guitar class. From what I can see from watching his videos, Andy doesn't pick the guitar at all, he taps the strings with both right and left hands to sound the notes and chords, while also tapping on the guitar body to create a percussion part. This is utterly different from the way a classical style guitarist would pick the strings. Aside from teaching you something about where notes and chords are to be found on the fingerboard, I can't imagine that classical guitar training would be of much help to you in learning to play his style. The playing styles are just SO different!

Just so you can compare styles, here's a link to a YouTube video of Edgar Cruz playing an arrangement of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" on solo guitar in classical style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9jrBg4L...

I seems Andy McKee's music is available only in tab, not notes, which makes sense given his somewhat unconventional approach to the guitar. Classical style guitar, of course, is written out in conventional music notation.

If you want to learn to play like Andy McKee, my suggestion would be to go to his website: www.candyrat.com, get tabs for his arrangements, and work through the tabs VERY SLOWLY while watching his YouTube videos for clues on how he uses his right and left hands to create sounds.

If you like Andy McKee's two handed tapping approach to the guitar, check out Michael Hedges, who actually pioneered this sort of approach to the acoustic guitar.

Hope this helps.