Songs with only/mostly Ambient Guitar + Vocals

[lifespace]

I've started recording an album. It's just tradition singer/songwriter stuff but I have a couple songs that don't seem to work well with the traditional drums-bass-guitar-keys arrangement (or my technical skills are not enough to realize those arrangements for those songs, either way). So, I'm considering recording them only as a few tracks, mostly ambient guitar and vocals; perhaps very minimal percussion or none at all. I've spent some time around here collab'ing/releasing, so I thought it would also be a nice way to show my ambient-loving side.

So, I have two questions. These songs have been the hardest to arrange and any help is greatly appreciated and might be critical for me to push through:

1) Can you point me to any songs that use only/most ambient guitar and vocals? I would really like to see their approach and how they prevented the song from being boring with just these elements.

2) I will probably use Guitar Rig 5 and/or Zoom MS-70 CDR (and bunch of other pedals, EHX Superego, etc.). If for this purpose, there seem to be some resources (e.g., patches) that I'm not aware of, would you kindly point me towards them?

Many thanks and happy 2016!

[Cloud Hunter]

Hi.

I know sod all about guitars (ambient or otherwise), but I do know about The English Cold by July Skies. Very haunting and misty sounds with guitar and vocals.

https://julyskies.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-cold

Hope that helps you.

[lifespace]

Spot on, this is beautiful music. Both the guitars and vocals are very ambient (lots of reverb on both). Lyrics are more sparse than my songs, but similar to what I want to do. Thanks!

[Cloud Hunter]

Cheers.

You may also want to consider Strymon Reverberators if you don't have one already. They seem to be popular with guitarists.

[lifespace]

Sure, I know Strymon. But I stopped obsessing about pedals and learned to live with what I have: A Zoom MS-70CDR (poor man's strymon). :-)

[regonsch]

You might want to check out Benoit Pioulard's Hymnal. He works in that field between ambient and singer/songwriter.

https://pioulard.bandcamp.com/album/hymnal

[Cloud Hunter]

I forgot about Darren Lock. He makes Frippy soundscapes with his guitars. No vocals though, but it's very nice.

[Ambire Seiche]

Dreamweapon by Spacemen 3 comes to mind here. The main song runs 44 minutes, and is woven together quite well.

On 19 August, Spacemen 3 gave an unusual live performance. Palmer had booked them to provide 'An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music' in the foyer of the Waterman's Art Centre in Brentford, London, to act as a prelude to a screening of the film Wings of Desire. Kember, Pierce and Carruthers were joined by Rugby musician Steve Evans. They played a 45-minute jam, based around a single chord strummed by Evans, featuring riffs from some of the songs from their as yet unreleased Playing With Fire material. This performance was recorded and was later released, in 1990, asDreamweapon.

above quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacemen_3#1988_2

Worth picking up a physical copy for the liner notes, IMHO.