OUGD505 - Further Research

Nowadays there are many famous artists such as Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran who use this technique. When researching into fingerstyle music for this brief it became very clear that due to artists such as these the micro-genre has become more and more popular within recent years.

Famous Fingerstyle Artists in the present day:

Ben Howard:

'Ben Howard plays guitar left-handed and makes extensive use of alternate tunings, such as CGCGGC (Old Pine, Everything), DADF#AD (In Dreams) and CGA#GFC (End of the Affair, Esmerelda). He also complements these unusual tunings by using a partial capo for many songs (Further Away, Everything, End of the Affair) in order to use harmonic or bass notes otherwise unavailable.

He also has a distinctive percussive strumming style, called the "pick and go", and Howard's method of laying the guitar flat on top of his knees and playing it percussively was influenced by contemporary folk songwriter and guitarist John Smith.'

Ed Sheeran:

'Ed Sheeran was born in February 1991 in Halifax, England. He began playing guitar at a young age and soon after started writing his own songs. When he was just a teenager, he moved to London to pursue his music, and his outpouring of creativity added up to several early EPs and hundreds of live shows. Drawing attention for his online performances, Sheeran hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart before he ever signed with a record label. Since signing with Atlantic, Sheeran has sold millions of records, had a song appear in the second installment of The Hobbit trilogy and won Grammys for hits like "Thinking Out Loud" (2014) and "Shape of You" (2017).'

Taking into account the new popularity of this style I started to research into pop art. The reasoning behind this is because both pop art and fingerstyle are based on expression and they both have developed and changed as time has moved on. Pop art was created with the intention of being bright and eye catching, it was created with the intention to be a popular style but didn't gain this popularity until later years. Traditionally guitarist were more background instruments but as seen by research this technique is much more fashionable in the present day meaning that artists who play the guitar in this way now stand out. 

Examples of Pop Art:

Piece by Richard Hamilton

Piece by Andy Warhol