Chris Proctor Guitar Tab Books, Instruction DVDs, Solos, Arrangements, Video Lessons

Chris Proctor

    When astute musicologists put their scholarly stamp on the current popularity of fingerstyle guitar, they will credit national fingerpicking champion Chris Proctor with being in the vanguard of the movement. A pioneer of the post-Kottke, pre-Windham Hill wave of "instrumental troubadours," Proctor carved out a career as an itinerant fingerstyle master when there were few available models, especially in the United States. More importantly, he refined an approach to the acoustic steel-string guitar that would serve as a blueprint for those who followed.

    Critics call his guitar playing "rich," "breathtaking" and "haunting." They describe his compositions as "spectacular," "elegant" and "challenging." They trace the roots of his style to folk, jazz, and classical music, and, when all else fails, they try and categorize his playing as "baroque folk." The guitar press compares him to Leo Kottke and Michael Hedges.

   Another reviewer ventures this analysis: "In his taut, faceted compositions, Chris gives the guitar sole responsibility for a piece's rhythmic, melodic and harmonic components, and in the process creates full-voiced 'guitar songs.' His playing illuminates the instrument's deepest voices and most sonorous qualities, rendering a pop-folk equivalent of the classical guitar sonata."

    These varied descriptive efforts typify the first-time listener's response to Chris Proctor's innovative world of the instrumental, steel-string fingerstyle guitar. Of course original music, if it really lives up to its name, is hard to classify, stewed from a unique set of ingredients, stirred by the writer's creative imagination, and defying easy categorization.

    Chris Proctor is an extraordinary performer with a gift for communicating the tremendous variety, vitality, and even accessibility found in his compositions. His live and recorded performances have attracted much praise, and have tested critics' and reviewers' abilities to neatly label and define his music.