Hey guys, I play acoustic guitar since 2008, I can play some advanced stuff in the likes of Andy Mckee and Tommy Emmanuel. The problem is: I can't incorporate any of that into my own playing. I mean, I definitely can do harp harmonics and stuff like that no problems, I just don't know how/when to do it when it comes down to my own arrangements. My arrangements always sound "correct", in the sense that the melody is played with the right chords. But it doesn't sound awesome just like the songs I can play from these guys.
To illustrate what I'm trying to say, let's take this arrangement as an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGSnZmg1b14
I can definitely mimic and play this song pretty much exactly like he did. The thing is, if I were to make an arrangement for this song, it wouldn't ever sound so good like this one. I would make a decent arrangement, using the right chords and getting a correct sound, but I can't experiment with the harmony like the guy in the video is doing, because I have little knowledge in this subject.
So, basically, what books or methods or whatever should I be studying in order to spice up my arrangements? I feel like music harmony books always tend to focus more on a jazzy aproach and that's not quite what I'm looking for at the moment. I enjoy more suspended chords, like Andy Mckee uses a lot, Pierre Bensusan, Mateus Asato as well to some extent. I definitely understand most pop songs' harmonic structure and I understand harmonic field to an intermediate level, I believe. So what should I be looking for next?
Which also leads to another question: I don't enjoy standard tuning all that much, the fingerstyle arrangements I find the most beautiful are always in alternate tunings and do explore a lot of harmonics. The thing is: is there a reasoning behind playing a song with a said tuning? For instance: are there songs that are more suitable for DADGAD instead of Open A tuning? Because when I see an arrangement of a popular song in alternate tuning it generally uses natural harmonics to highlight some important melody notes, which gives me a feel of "this tuning was picked for this song" rather than "he simply played the song in this tuning because he arbitraty elected it". So, what do I have to study in order to know how to adjust tunings to a specific song?
I hope that I've made myself clear, as I know my english is not the best out there.