I'm a big fan of acoustic guitar arrangements, songs that are finger picked or that have one acoustic guitar playing chords for a rhythm and another one playing lead lines. James Taylor is an expert at this playing a bass line, sometimes even with his thumb, while playing chords with enough 'hammer-ons' and 'pull-offs' to simulate two or three guitars.
One song with a great guitar arrangement is Joan Baez's love/hate song to Bob Dylan Diamonds And Rust. I always assumed that some session player wrote and played the picked arrangement, the intro is especially intriguing, but this video from 1975 shows Joan playing the whole arrangement live.
Hey Bob, can you play guitar like this?
This gives me a new respect for Joan Baez although I've always liked this song and listen to it often on my iPod. Other songs with the same sort of arrangement are If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot, Roads To Moscow by Al Stewart, Operator by Jim Croce and Heat Of The Night by The Tooners.
One of the most underrated guitar players in my opinion and an expert in this style of playing is Paul Simon. He is a one man band.
It's not just the complexity gotten out of one guitar, played in the same manner as a piano, but the sound. I especially love that shimmering guitar sound. Another couple of tunes that have a great acoustic guitar sound are Black Water by the Doobie Brothers and Dear Jill by Blodwyn Pig.
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