How To Improve Your Acoustic Guitar Playing
Posted on 07. Jul, 2011 by Billie in Tips For Learning Guitar
I heard a lot of people say if you can master electric guitar then you can also master acoustic guitar playing. Is that true? Maybe not. Although acoustic guitar is somehow similar as electric guitar, to play both of them require some different techniques.
I’ve heard guitar players who can fly on electric guitar, play all kinds of solos, riffs. When they tend to play acoustic guitar, they can hardly get clean sound. Especially if they plug in to amp, a very small scratch sound will be enlarged by the amp and sound like noise.
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Here are some tips of how to improve your acoustic guitar playing:
#1 Slow down
A lot of electric guitar players like to play fast licks. They also try to play acoustic guitar like they way they play on electric guitar. That’s wrong. Slow down first, try to get every note as clean as you can. Then you can gradually speed up. This sounds very familiar to many guitar players, but not many people will do it. When they see Tommy Emmanuel’s acoustic guitar playing they forget about this reminder. They immediately pick up their guitar and try to play like Tommy. That’s impossible.
Some people ask why they don’t make those noises when they play electric guitar, but when it comes to acoustic guitar playing they just don’t know where the noise comes from. Electric guitar player like rock players they often play electric guitar with effect of distortion. That effect sometimes will cover the noise you make, so you won’t notice it. Even you are an electric guitar player you still should slow down practice with clean sound.
Here is how the guitar master Laurence Juber says about the sound.
Interviewer: I bet you have a clean sound on electric?
Laurence Juber: I do, and even when it’s dirty it’s clean. Because you need the clarity to get what’s going on. For me there’s certainly no effects on acoustic, because it’s “How big a sound can you get?”
#2 Learn Finger Picking
Acoustic guitar playing requires a lot more finger picking than electric guitar. Most of styles on electric guitar require playing with a pick only. However, acoustic guitar playing require both. You need to play with a pick to strum chords and you also need to play with fingers especially if you play fingerstyle.
#3 Get a professional instructor
The best and fast way to improve your acoustic guitar playing is to practice and learn from a professional guitar teacher. Although there are some guitarists are self taught, they still learn from other guitarists. If you can’t offer a private local teacher, there are some professional online guitar lessons worth to check out like Jamplay. At Jamplay, you can learn than 40 instructors and artists to improve your acoustic guitar playing with very little budget.
