FLATPICK-L is an Internet mailing list, created in November, 1995, for the discussion of the style of acoustic guitar playing known as "flatpicking." This term is taken to include bluegrass, old-time, fiddle tunes, acoustic swing and jazz, "new acoustic music," newgrass, flatpicked Celtic styles, etc.

It is not taken to include modern country/country & western or rock.

We're talking here about the acoustic guitar styles played by the likes of Clarence White, Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Steve Kaufman, David Grier, Beppe Gambetta, Dan Crary, Joe Carr, Barry Solomon, and so forth.

All flatpickers are welcome, regardless of skill level.

All flatpicking fans are welcome, too.

Acceptable topics will include (but will not be strictly limited to) discussion of the above mentioned styles, their practitioners, techniques, flatpicking tablatures, and issues related to instruments, picks, strings, instructional materials, etc. Also acceptable are concert and workshop announcements and reviews.

Some technical, netiquette, and legal issues:

1. Commercial advertisements are, in general, not welcome on FLATPICK-L. Non-commercial advertisements from individuals wishing to sell personal instruments, etc., will be tolerated, as will announcements of WWW pages from FLATPICK-L subscribers and from flatpicking musicians and merchants.

2. Advertisements for tortoiseshell picks and other tortoiseshell products on FLATPICK-L are forbidden. Trade in endangered species is a (USA) Federal crime, and carries stiff penalties. Discussion of tortoiseshell picks and other tortoiseshell products is allowed, but advertisement of them for sale or trade is forbidden on the list. In addition, posts asking for availability of these products are forbidden.

3. Flames (personal attacks), off-topic discussion, and the use of profanity are not welcome on FLATPICK-L. Any discussions along these lines must be taken "off-list." Warnings will be issued to those not abiding by this charter, and actions will be taken to temporarily suspend or permanently eject the offending parties.

4. Trim your quotes. When replying to a post on the list, it wastes space and bandwidth and is considered poor form to quote the entire message to which you are replying. Please don't quote more than you post. If your mailer is set to automatically include the entire post to which you are replying, please disable this setting. If you post a reply to the list that contains more quoted material than original material, or that already contains the FLATPICK-L "tag line" that's included at the end of every FLATPICK-L post, you will be set to NOPOST status. This means that you will be able to receive the list traffic, but you will not be able to post to the list.

5. The LISTSERV software that distributes FLATPICK-L has been configured to automatically reject all attachments and multi-part messages. This means you can't post to FLATPICK-L in MIME or HTML format, and you can't send attachments of any sort to the list. If you receive a MIME/multi-part message rejection notice, then turning off the HTML formatting in your mailer will probably fix the problem. However, note that the owners of FLATPICK-L don't know how to turn off the HTML or other automatic attachment "features" in your mailer, so don't ask us.

6. The LISTSERV software has been configured to reject posts from non-subscribers. This was done to prevent spam, but please note that this also makes it so that you won't be able to post to the list from an email address that is different from the one you originally used to subscribe to the list.

7. The LISTSERV software has been configured to reject postings longer than 200 lines.

Let's enjoy this mailing list. Let's keep it clean and on-topic.

-Bo "FLATPICK-L co-founder and charter author" Parker