Inside the Songwriting and Guitar Style of Lucinda Williams
Explore the music of Lucinda Williams by way of some of her best-known songs, with tab examples demonstrating her rhythm playing.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of The Complete Singer-Songwriter, Beyond Strumming, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with AG, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on Patreon.
Three More Christmas Carols for Solo Acoustic Guitar
Check out Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers' fingerstyle guitar arrangements of 3 Christmas classics: “The First Noel,” “Joy to the World,” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
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Video Lesson: Inside the Soulful Acoustic Guitar Style of Bill Withers
An immersion in Bill Withers’ music brings powerful lessons for any guitar-playing songwriter, especially about the value of directness. This lesson goes inside some of Withers’ best songs—especially from his first few albums, when his own guitar was most prominent—to reveal the understated accompaniment style that carries them.
Watch Lucinda Williams’ Classic Performance of “Passionate Kisses”
To play the acoustic guitar rhythm part of Lucinda Williams' "Passionate Kisses", capo at the fourth fret and use C shapes, which sound in the key of E major.
Sunny War and Her Guild Dreadnought Shine on the Evocative ‘Simple Syrup’
After listening to Sunny War's Simple Syrup, you won’t be able to get the melodies of this one-of-a-kind songwriter/guitarist out of your head.
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Video Lesson: Exploring Dropped-D Fingerpicking
Fingerpicking and dropped-D tuning fit together like hand and glove. For evidence, just consider the long list of fingerpicking classics played in dropped D, which includes Jorma Kaukonen’s “Embryonic Journey,” Pete Seeger’s “Living in the Country,” the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,”…
Video Lesson: Exploring Joan Baez’s Elegant Guitar Style
A skilled and precise fingerstyle player, Joan Baez modeled an approach to accompaniment that was not flashy, but effective, elegant, and complete-sounding with no other instruments.
Three Christmas Carols for Solo Acoustic Guitar
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers teaches simple arrangements for "Angels We Have Heard on High", "Silent Night", and "O Holy Night" that let the melodies shine.
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How a New Lap Steel Guitar Sparked Ben Harper’s First Instrumental Album
In 2010, during a visit to New York City, Ben Harper stopped into the guitar mecca Rudy’s Music to check out instruments. He was sampling a series of top-of-the-line archtops when a guitar stopped him in his tracks: an instrument by renowned luthier John Monteleone. Though Harper is best known as a lap steel player who brought vintage Weissenborns into the limelight of contemporary roots-rock, he heard in that archtop a tone quality that he’d been seeking for years, and he wondered whether Monteleone would consider building a guitar for lap slide.
Video Lesson: Ben Harper Teaches His #1 Anthem “Better Way”
Released as the first single from Ben Harper’s album Both Sides of the Gun, “Better Way” topped the AAA charts in 2006, but the song’s call to stand up for your rights and ideals continues to reverberate. The (Dixie) Chicks…
Album Review: Sarah Jarosz Digs Deeper with Multi-Instrumentalist/Producer John Leventhal
What’s most striking on this rich, satisfying album is Jarosz’s growth as a songwriter,
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“Angel from Montgomery”— Here’s How to Play John Prine’s Best-Known Song
“I am an old woman.” So goes the opening of “Angel from Montgomery,” first released in 1971 by John Prine, who was neither a woman nor old. Along with songs like “Hello in There” and “Sam Stone” on his self-titled…
How Singer-Songwriter Anaïs Mitchell Tapped Into Tradition in Hadestown—and New Band Bonny Light Horseman
Back in 2006, Anaïs Mitchell was in a Vermont studio with producer/guitarist Michael Chorney working on her album The Brightness. Then in her mid-20s, she was already a rising star of the singer-songwriter world, winning the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New…
Woody Guthrie’s Songwriting Wisdom
Guthrie is in many ways our prototypical singer-songwriter, showing the young Bob Dylan, among countless others, how to use old songs to make new ones.
Video Lesson: Bruce Cockburn Teaches His Sophisticated Guitar Style
In Bruce Cockburn’s hands, the guitar becomes a true band in a box, delivering powerful grooves, riffs, melodies, harmonized lines, and improvised solos in real time.
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Video Lesson: Learn to Play Like John Denver
Thanks to his gift for simple and emotionally direct expression, the songs John Denver wrote and interpreted have remained standard repertoire for any musicians who sing with an acoustic guitar.
DIY Folk: What It Takes to Survive and Thrive in the Streaming Era
At the 2019 Folk Alliance International conference, held in Montréal in February, evidence of the vitality and diversity of the contemporary folk scene was everywhere, as nearly 3,000 attendees representing 47 countries crammed the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel with acoustic…
Video Lesson: David Rawlings Shares a Close-up Look at His Singular Style
When Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released their seminal debut back in 1996, they were often tagged as traditionalists—after all, the album title was Revival, with a black-and-white cover photo of Welch that looked as if it could have been…
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Acoustic Classic: ‘Quite Early Morning’
Pete Seeger wrote this lovely song in the 1960s, and it may have been the last song he sang. He told banjoist Tony Trischka this was his favorite of his own songs.
Video Lesson: Sus Chord Embellishments
Some of your favorite classic songs from artists like James Taylor and Bob Dylan rely heavily on suspended chords for embellishment.
Fender Unveils the American Acoustasonic Telecaster
At the New York showroom, I spent some time exploring these sounds with a natural finish Acoustasonic plugged straight into a Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb tube amp.
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Video Lesson: Inside Joni Mitchell’s Inventive Guitar Style
Mitchell reinvented the guitar as a vehicle for accompaniment and songwriting. The evolution of her guitar style is inseparable from her journey as one of the defining singer-songwriters of her generation.
Beyond Strumming | Acoustic Guitar Champions
Learn to create dynamic accompaniment parts in any setting.
Weekly Workout: Build Your Speed by Using More Efficient Fingerings
If you watch the hands of guitarists who play with enviable speed and fluidity, you may notice how little effort they seem to exert. Their finger movements are relaxed and minimal, considering the amount of music they are generating. What they’re playing is surely not easy, but it looks that way. So how does a guitarist achieve that state of grace?
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Sunny War: A Different Kind of Blues
And then there’s Sunny War's guitar playing—a startling take on fingerstyle technique, with melodic riffs dancing over bluesy bass lines.