American fingerstyle and tapping guitarist Preston Reed has to be seen to be believed.

Standing on stage with just himself and his guitar, he creates a truly outstanding sound with his fingers, thumbs, fists and hands that if you didn't know better you would think was coming from a full-blown orchestra.

"I played the guitar normally for a long time and made five albums before, in 1987, I decided I wanted to hear more sounds coming out of it," said the 54-year-old who now lives in Scotland.

"I was hearing all these possibilities in my head and wasn't able to create them properly so I learned this new way to create more orchestral music.

"I make the guitar accommodate the music I want to make and if you use your imagination you can hear me do various other sounds that make the composition sound more like an orchestra than one man and his guitar.

"Ages ago I used to sing but as little as possible and after a time I was able to be just instrumental.

"The guitar is doing my singing for me."

With 15 solo albums under his belt Reed has built up a dedicated following around the world and a pretty good collection of guitars too.

"I have about 20," he said.

"About half of them aren't in playing shape though and some are more like museum pieces.

"In my show I will be using six different guitars and creating a tour de force of music with jazz, blues, funk and rock all on show."

Reed has also found fame on Youtube recently after a video using his track Night Ride received more than 20,000 hits.

"A mate of mine, Marcus Byrne, took Night Ride and this footage he shot in India last year on the train and made this really cool video around it.

"It charted recently at number 70 in the global chart."

You can see the video below. All the music is provided by Reed with the aid of just one guitar.

Preston Reed, Halfmoon, Lower Richmond Road, May 13, 8.30pm, £10 (£8 adv). Call 020 8780 9383 or halfmoon.co.uk.