[Brent Hutto]

As usual, Bob, you place this discussion in its larger context beyond just our AGF echo chamber.

In particular when you say, "There is an audience out there that loves alternating bass arrangements to the exclusion of all other" that is what I've been trying to figure out how to say in several of these threads. I live in South Carolina and when I encounter people who either play or want to talk about "acoustic guitar playing" I've learned they invariably have one of two things in mind. They either think of Bluegrass rhythm guitar (with or without taking flatpicked solo breaks) or they are thinking of what you call "alternating bass arrangements".

The stuff Ed Gerhard does in the "Water Is Wide" vein might as well be classical guitar for all the relevance it has to people I've talked guitar with over the years. If it doesn't either have a strummed Bluegrass rhythm guitar part or alternating bass "fingerpicking" it's just not relevant.

Of course I meet tons of people who hear "guitar" and think "electric guitar" but that's a different discussion! As an aside, your reference to "chicken picking" is apt...I hear plenty of that coming from the electric guitar room in music stores.

P.S. I think much of Bob's accounting of things might be due to the simple fact that lots of people respond more to rhythm than to melody when experiencing music. I am quite the opposite, myself.