Make chord progressions more distinctive and get outside the box of strumming block chords.
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Editor's Picks
Adam Perlmutter is the editor of Acoustic Guitar magazine and has written hundreds of articles, reviews, and song introductions (as well as expertly engraving and transcribing the music for a comparable number of lessons and compositions.)
It’s impossible to choose favorites, but here are a few lessons he’s worked on recently and suggests you check out.
This brief exercise is excerpted from Rhythm and Strumming Basics by Josh Workman. Let’s start working on some chord shifting by changing between G and C chords on each beat (Example 6). Allow your fingers to change as slowly as necessary for a smooth transition. If the open strings continue…
Some modern rock and pop tunes get a boost by injecting a laid-back groove with a 16th-note swing feel. Example 7a shows one common syncopated groove you can get with this feel, and Example 7b shows how you might embellish it to sound similar to Train’s hit “Drops of Jupiter.”
A great way to add a percussive pop to your rhythm patterns is to play scratch rhythms on beats two and four of each measure, simulating the sound of a backbeat snare drum.
Blues and rock are two styles that are heavily intertwined, and the rhythm pattern in Example 3 instills more of a bluesy sound into your rhythm simply because it’s a common rhythm pattern in blues tunes.
As you practice your scales, it’s good to remind yourself of the function of the individual notes of those scales. Here we start with open-position scales taken from the chord progression for "Autumn Leaves."
Looking at bass notes this way gives you some flexibility to begin working melodic lines into the otherwise-basic chord progressions in the Carter Family repertoire
The music in most guitar books and magazines is written in standard notation and tablature. Here's how to read standard guitar notation and guitar tabs.
Natural harmonics are produced at specific locations, or nodes, that divide an open string into equal parts. The pitch is determined by the number of divisions.
If you’ve explored my Acoustic Rock Basics lesson “Soloing with Pentatonic Scales,” you’ll notice that the major scale encompasses the major pentatonic and adds two more notes: the fourth and seventh of the key.
Monotonic-bass fingerpicking, in which your thumb keeps playing the same bass note instead of alternating between two or three notes, is common in acoustic blues but works great in folk and rock, too.
The two classic slide materials are glass and metal. Some of the first slides were made from the tops of wine bottles (hence the term bottleneck guitar) or from lengths of pipe (hence the term . . . er . . . metal slide).
About Acoustic Guitar lessons. Learning to play the guitar takes more than just figuring out what fingers go on which frets and which strings to pluck or pick. You need to absorb these mechanics, for sure, but you also need to know how different techniques fit together and how you can put them to use in service of making music with soul and spirit. Memorizing your favorite players’ licks and arrangements is an essential part of the process, too, but all that work doesn’t truly pay off until you’ve internalized the moves and made them your own. The players and teachers whose words and music are shared on this site understand these facets of learning and offer unique, in-depth lessons. Here, you’ll find riffs and exercises, full songs to play, technique tips, listening suggestions, and advice on how to practice as well as what to practice. We’ve been publishing high-quality guitar lessons since 1990, written and developed by some of the best guitar teachers around.
