Guy and Guitar

When a song has nothing but a guy singing and playing his guitar.

Some people abbreviate this genre name to just "guytar", "G^2" or "G&G". Guytar songs are one of the simplest types of songs to record. This is good because you've only got a week to get your song in. It's also bad because it means there have been 50 million guytar entries to SongFight! already and the audience is generally pretty tired of them. If you're looking for votes, or positive reviews, guytar is a risky genre. The simplicity of the instrumentation leaves the singing and songwriting to stand completely on their own merits, so you'd better have some good singing and songwriting. Additionally the community has been flooded with songs of this genre, so if you want to overcome that you'll have to take it up even another notch in quality. Good luck!

Avoiding the Guytar Stigma

Here are some simple things you can do to try to avoid the guytar stigma:

• add a bass guitar track
• add some harmony/backup vocal tracks
• add a counter-melody on any other instrument (keyboard and kazoo, for example, are very popular on SF!)
• put in some occasional light real percussion, like tambourine, shaker, bongos, etc.
• add in some occasional electronic percussion or other synth/electronic noises to add ambience

Avoiding the Guytar Stigma While Still Staying True to Guytar

If you really, really must just sing and strum:

• avoid moderato: fast and rockin', or moody and smoky-slow
• tune that guitar as if your life depended on it
• keep it changing: too much repetition will call attention to your instrumentation
• use your voice and or guitar in an odd way (an occasional falsetto note, a naked guitar solo riff, a percussive string-slap, etc.)

This phenomenon is so common that there have even been songs submitted under names such as Boy and Guitar and A Boy and His Guitar.

See also: girl and guitar, as represented by SongFighter Bjam (nobody abbreviates this genre name, yet).