How to Play Acoustic Guitar the Right Way

How to Play Acoustic Guitar the Right Way

Doing anything the right way is subject to other things like your style, culture, or a variety of other things. Knowing that, we’ll take a general and gentle approach to how to play acoustic guitar.

You’ve got people who use flat picks, fingerpicks, fingernails, and thumbpicks. You’ve also got people who play bluegrass while others play classical, pop, country, or blues. You might say it’s all the same but it just isn’t. Bluegrassers use much bigger strings, in general, than a pop guitarist and classical players use nylon strings instead of steel strings. There are so many options and styles to playing guitar that it might be difficult to nail down one way of playing. We’ll try to do the impossible today.

How to Play Acoustic Guitar: Tips, Tricks, and Myths

How to Play Acoustic Guitar: Tips, Tricks, and Myths

One of our contributor’s got a call from an old guitar student this week. Of nearly 1,000 people he had taught how to play acoustic guitar (and electric), this guy was one of the best. Now an adult making a career as a musician, the former student shared “Man, I’m playing acoustic guitar a lot now, and I LOVE it! I never realized how different it was from electric.”

Is it, though? While each style of guitar has its distinctions, can it really be that much of a change? In this post, we’ll tell you how to play acoustic guitar and how to confront a few myths associated with the instrument. Maybe we’ll even convert a couple of electric guitarists to at least give the acoustic a(nother) shot.