.......an electric guitarist

.......an acoustic guitarist

or

.......a "guitarist"?

Just my opinion, it seems pretty damned limiting if you select just one or the other. Yes there are probably some techniques that are more prevalent between the two but.....

.......there are far more similarities than differences. Can the two really be distinguished? Personally, I'm a guitarist. I play and "teach" fingerstyle acoustic (classical and steel string), flat pick acoustic, electric (rhythm and lead). I feel comfortable in saying "I'm a guitarist". I have a lot of colleagues that heartily disagree with this logic however.

Your oppinions

Segovia probably wouldn't consider the electric guitar a guitar.

Me? I just call myself a guitarist.

I'm a guitarist; though for a while now I've been more of an electric player than acoustic. But there was a time it was much the other way around.

Hi,

I think of myself as a guitarist. Like Caevan, I don't play acoustic very often anymore (which is a damn shame because I'm losing my Travis style technique).In truth, the only reason I own an acoustic is because it doesn't seem to make much sense to call yourself a "guitarist" and not own an acoustic. Besides, I keep telling myself that I'll get back to Travis style one day. My latest excuse is that the acoustic needs a setup. It's feeling kinda' spongy in the upper frets.

I consider myself to be a "guitar player". I don't play professionally, can't read music, own two acoustic guitars that get played infrequently. I consider a "guitarist" to be a better trained musician than I am who earns a living, or successfully augments his living with the guitar, either by getting paid to perfrom or by teaching.
Whitefang

Guitarist...I have acoustic both nylon and steel, and have several electrics. I play the acoustic more than the electrics daily just because it's handy to pick up and start playing. I love both. A guitarist is someone who plays guitar. They may be brand new, or they may be an old hand at it. Some may be pro's and some may even become masters. The ones that make it to the big stage and receive national attention are some of the best. The ones that don't, are more like the rest...

I am a musician that plays guitar, I really consider myself a singer/songwriter/producer more than a guitarist (but none of those professionally, I just do those things for myself, friends, and family). I have both electric and acoustic guitars. I prefer the electrics and by far.

Guitarist. Bassist. Mandolinist. Musician.

Guitarist.
These days almost exclusively electric, though in the past it was the opposite. On album credits I generally indicate "electric guitar", primarily because I tend to play in a very esoteric niche stylistically, & I think it's important to define the instrument for what it is. But as a player, the distinction between guitars is not really meaningful, it's the fact of 6 strings on a neck with frets.

I don't know what to think of myself, so I try not to, mostly...

just a guitar player. i play acoustic and electric with 90% of my time using electric.

Interesting topic.

I write about 70% of my material on acoustic guitar, the rest is written in my head, on electric guitar, on bass or keyboard.
So the acoustic guitar rules.

I record/perform the same material on electric guitar almost exclusively...let's say 90%. So electric guitar rules.

I view myself as a musician that uses the guitar as a primary instrument because that is the one I am most adept at. The acoustic guitar is also the easiest instrument to lug into the backyard, or into a car or onto an airline.

Cheers

So if I understand you correctly, there is a distinguishable difference between a "guitarist" and guitar player based on skill, training and the ability to make money?

[quote=A McLeod III
So if I understand you correctly, there is a distinguishable difference between a "guitarist" and guitar player based on skill, training and the ability to make money? [/quote]

I think I would concur with that. It seems to me that there should be some differentiation between a serious musician who has spent the necessary time and effort to achieve some level of expertise on the instrument and a person who strums a dozen chords as an accompaniment to a song and wouldn't recognize a I-vi7-ii7-V7 if it jumped up and bit them on the posterior.

I'll tell you what really hurts my heart. It's when I see very beautiful, very expensive instruments being pounded on by people who never leave first position.

Like many here, I own and play both electric and acoustic but the electric has been a much bigger part of my focus for the last 10 years or so... but then there are times when an acoustic is just what I need to refresh my musical perspective.

I have 2 electrics, 2 acoustics, a bass and a keyboard in my home studio, all of which I play. I'm at about 50/50 with the electric/acoustic ratio, although most of my recordings are electric. I get a lot of my ideas on the acoustic. I'm not a pro by any means. I've never made a living out of my playing, but still consider myself a guitarist.

Fred, that sort of thing always bothered me, too. That, or the Pete Townsend thing: The only electric I ever owned was a cheap-o Kalamazoo with a wonky neck and even hinkier electronics. Having no job that paid well enough at the time, and always desiring a much better axe, it riled me to sit in a movie theater watching "Woodstock" and seeing Townsend destroy that gorgeous SG and toss it away!
Whitefang

I could never stand the idea of destroying guitars either, but to be fair to Townsend, that was an extremely brief period in rock history.

Due to this:

...And other responses, I need to revise my answer somewhat.

I have a formal music education. I can play- well, at one time could play- entire symphonic pieces on cello from memory. I've also gotten instruction on guitar.

But I never cared enough in all the years after all those lessons to retain the knowledge. Techniques? Yes. Nomenclature and the like? Not so much.

So I'm somewhere in between.

Call me...a musitarist.

...or a guitician

Muitarcian, mortician, mutation...

Axemurderer...

Oh yes...all that...and I buy good guitars, just to keep them out of the hands of those who really deserve them!

MUSITATIS MUTANDIS

I consider myself a guitarist, but TRY to be a musician first... as in not box myself in to just what comes natural on that particular instrument.
Playing other instruments helps. Even if you don't play them that WELL, it forces you think in a different way.
I've also done some songwriting, and there I just try not to think in terms of complex guitar things because sometimes it gets in the way.

Blues guitarist with some Classic Rock leanings....

My first love, and my first instrument is the Guitar, but at this point, I'm really an Electronic Musician who happens to be a Guitarist, rather than a DJ or a Keyboard Player. On my business card, and my FB page, I describe my role as Guitarist & Chief Sound Mangler. Along with my guitars, I keep a bunch of synths, samplers, loopers & a drum machine with a pad controller. I also play real percussion.

I still play the acoustic guitar, and I keep a pair of nice Alvarez acoustics at hand, a 6-string & a 12-string, but I tend to compose with an electric in my lap, and I usually have the electric plugged into a Guitar Synth, a Multi-FX pedalboard, and a Boss RC-50 Looper. (BTW, a looper is a great tool for catching ideas on the fly, like an electronic sketchpad.) I also approach effects like Delay, Pitch-Shifting & Ring Modulation as compositional tools, adding rhythm effects, moving harmonies, or synth-like tones that don't fall anywhere on the musical scale. I still think in terms of my guitar first, but after that, anything can happen.

i rarely consider myself a guitarist, but when i do, i prefer to think of myself as an electronic lead guitarist.

Like a bunch of you I've played both for a long time, but really my thing is electric. I have a nice Maton acoustic and I use it a lot, but I don't have any great 'acoustic' technique like travis picking, finger style etc. Ages ago I started a thread about players who really spoke on both instruments. I was thinking of people like Tommy Emmanuel and Phil Keaggy.

I really like Clapton's "unpugged" record (his solo on Old Love is epic), but it does seem to me that he is mainly bringing his electric thing to acoustic instruments.

Btw I occasionally play acoustic in a duo tuned down a half step and it feels much friendlier.

Think Paul Simon. In many cases, the more complex his music became, the more his lyrics suffered.
Whitefang

Hi Harvey,

I agree with you regarding Clapton's Unplugged album. I think it's some of his best work in terms of musicality. However, IMO Clapton is an "intermediate" player on acoustic*. There really isn't anything on the Unplugged album that a decent player can't figure out in about 5-10 minutes. I was also very surprised that his album covering Robert Johnson (Is it Mr. Johnson and Me or is it Me and Mr. Johnson had such an electric vibe. I wold have expected him to play Robert Johnson's music on acoustic. That being said, he certainly is one hell of an electric blues guitarist.

* It's only an opinion. Please don't all of you start yelling at me at once.