Category Archives: acoustic
Keith Richards Youtube Acoustic Blues in A
Keith Richards playing acoustic Blues guitar. If you are a Rolling Stones fan you’ve got to see this youtube video of ‘Keef’ playing acoustic guitar in the key of A, 32 20 Blues, Robert Johnson style. Complete with ‘tude and … Continue reading
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Joni Mitchell Youtube – Guitar Open Tuning
Joni Mitchell is one of the truly great acoustic guitar innovators. A lot of people that aren’t guitar addicts may not realize how great she is and would just see her as a good songwriter, poet and singer. Don’t be … Continue reading
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Acoustic Guitar Made Easy or Easier
Acoustic guitar can be made easy and here’s two fantastic tips that you probably wouldn’t have considered. Do you ever have the problem that when you haven’t played acoustic guitar for a while or when you’ve bought a new guitar, … Continue reading
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Guitar Scale C Major – A Smoother Way
You know when you are playing guitar scales and your fingers get a bit caught up and it’s difficult to move up to another fret and it feels a little clumsy? Well here’s a simple solution that could easily fix … Continue reading
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Country Guitar Scale in the Key of A – Part 2
The Country Guitar Scale as I mentioned in my previous Country Guitar Scale article is none other than an F# Minor Blues scale starting on A. Because there is a relationship between F sharp minor and the key of A … Continue reading
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The Gap Between the Worlds mp3
Dedicated To My Son Joshua (1980 – 1999) A few years ago I recorded a piece of music called ‘The Gap Between the Worlds’ it seems a relevant time to share it with my friends. It’s in open-tuning and is … Continue reading
Filed under acoustic, MUSIC, open tuning
David Wilcox Youtube
My first encounter with the music of David Wilcox was when I read an Acoustic Guitar Magazine in the early 90′s. A few years later when they named the top 10 acoustic guitar albums, his album ‘How Did You Find … Continue reading
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A Country Scale for Guitar Improvisation
Country Guitar Scales are the same as Blues Guitar Scales. If you are playing a country or folk song on guitar in the key of A, the chances are you would be using the chords A. D and E. Yes there … Continue reading
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Guitar Blogs and Directories – Open Letter
Guitar Blogs and Directories; Dear Fellow Internet Developers As each day goes by I am starting to see my guitar posts and content appear on websites from one side of the Internet to the other. As a musician of almost 40 … Continue reading
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Gordon Giltrap youtube
Gordon Giltrap recorded an excellent album in the seventies (1977) . At the time, my memory tells me he was playing Flyde guitars, a guitar company that made a lot of unique instrument. If you haven’t heard him and you … Continue reading
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Seventies Style Acoustic Guitar Part 2
Acoustic guitar players in the seventies often played a lot of musical cliches, no problem really, it is really common to all styles. I’ve written a reasonably simple chord pattern with a descending bass part. Whenm you play it you’ll … Continue reading
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Steven Baughman YouTube – Three Irish Tunes
Steven Baughman is a magnificentopen tuning fingerstyle guitar player. I first heard of himabout 8 years ago when I was playing Celtic style guitar and from memory Pierre Bensusan had mentioned how good he was, so I followed through on … Continue reading
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David Qualey youTube – Jesu Joy of Mans Desiring
The David Qualey youTube recording of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring by Bach is a very interesting one, although the song has been played by many guitarists globally on classical guitar, his interpretation is rather unique. You’ll notice it’s very … Continue reading
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John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman Youtube
If you are a regular reader of my guitar blog you would already know that John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman are two of my all time acoustic guitar favorite players, if you have not heard of themm you are in … Continue reading
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Acoustic Blues Guitar – youTube Stefan Grossman
You may be familiar with Stefan Grossman from the many guitar instruction videos and books. One of my all time favourite guitar albums is called Thunder on the Run and I particularly like Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn playing duets … Continue reading
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Eric Bibb – Blues Guitar on 12 string youTube
The blues can be very simple and even broken down to one chord or riff, the most common blues are generally three chords; or you could go to the other extreme and play a jazz blues with numerous chord changes. … Continue reading
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Eric Bibb – Blues Guitar – youTube
Eric Bibb plays a mix of Blues Folk gospel acoustic guitar. If you haven’t heard him play I highly recommend you have a listen. His guitar playing is very smooth, in fact he’s one of those players who plays just … Continue reading
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Diversity in Your Set List = a Good Gig
Have you ever been to see someone play music and it seemed like they’ve played what sounded like almost the same song all night? Sound familiar? So how to get around this? If you are new to performing you may not … Continue reading
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Scott Nygaard – A Great Player
I first became aware of the Scott Nygaard on a Tim O’brien album and then gradually started to see his name appear in acoustic Guitar magazine, a magazine that I consider to be essential reading for acoustic guitar players. http://acousticguitar.com … Continue reading
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Harry Manx Blues and Indian guitar
For years now I’ve been a lover of both Indian music and the blues. Due to my studies with the Sarod player Ashok Roy I have played quite a few instrumentals in open tuning, I used to use the tuning B, F# … Continue reading
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Simple Blues in G for Guitar
Early today I was writing a Blues Variation Scale for my other guitar blog and I thought it would be a good idea to write a very simple Blues In G for Acoustic Guitar because the other blues I wrote … Continue reading
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Sixties Songs Small Faces Itchycoo Park
The Small Faces sang Itchycoo Park is a classic sixties song. I’ve included in my acoustic guitar blog because I feel it is relevant, ok I’m cheating, I can hear an acoustic guitar in the intro. And really it’s too … Continue reading
Yesterday Beatles Paul McCartney
The song yesterday by Paul McCartney is an all time acoustic classic. It is very melancholy and is one of those songs that if you were around at the time when it was popular would somehow stop you in your … Continue reading
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Led Zeppelin Acoustic Guitar
So many of the rock groups of the sixties and seventies are known for their electric music. At the time and even still I liked the Led Zeppelin 3 album, complete with cover that rotated. I’ve decided to post their … Continue reading
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John Martyn – May You Never
One of the great guitar players to come of Scotland is John Martyn, he influenced many acoustic guitar players. The band America recorded one of his songs ‘Head and Heart’ on their second album. Also Eric Clapton recorded his tune … Continue reading
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Jimi Hendrix Acoustic Blues
Jimi Hendrix is primarily known as an Electric Guitar Player, and a brilliant one of that. I think it’s important to hear guitar players without the electronics, unplugged before being unplugged was fashionable. So here’s a youTube of Jimi Hendrix … Continue reading
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Sixties Hippy Guitar Inspiration – San Francisco
Anyone that was alive in the sixties, and in a conscious (or semi conscious) state would be aware of the impact that the song San Francisco had globally. Overnight, from one side of the world to the other there were … Continue reading
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Eleven Basic Tips on Playing Guitar
Most electric guitarists that have grown up playing rock guitar want the volume control to go up to eleven, not ten. So in keeping with that philosophy I thought I’d write eleven useful tips to help beginners that are learning … Continue reading
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Michael Hedges – The Great Acoustic Innovator
Many people are not aware of the great guitar player that influenced so many guitar players, Michael Hedges died in a car accident in 1993, he was 43 years old. He played open tuning guitar, what this means to the … Continue reading
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Doc Watson – Black Mountain Rag
Doc Watson the blind acoustic bluegrass guitar player is by far one of the greatest players in his style. What has surprised me a lot over the years, is that many people I have encountered thought he was a black … Continue reading
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Dan Crary – Flatpicking
Here’s a video of the very brilliant Dan Crary flapicking a medley of songs. I first became aware of Dan Crary about 30 years ago when he used to write for Guitar Player magazine. I have worked in bands where … Continue reading
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Tony Rice – Brilliant Acoustic Guitar Technique
Flawless guitar techniques are things that I have always appreciated. Regardless of style, credit always needs to be given where it’s due. I’ve been listening to Tony Rice the Bluegrass player for almost 30 years now. He’s one of the … Continue reading
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Earth Hour Unplugged with a Mad Family
My son was walking around the house saying ‘hippy…hip…eeze, hippies…hippies, you’re all hippies’, shaking his head in disgust and disapproval. My daughter, became enlightened at about age three and fully understands compassion, caring for others and the world around us. … Continue reading
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More Than Just A Guitarist
When we are young musicians we often have our sites set on bright lights, touring, albums and all the other hoohaa that happens in the music industry. But as we mature as musicians we start to see the other sides of … Continue reading
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Solo Acoustic Guitar Playing – Dropped D Blues Folk Jazz
Playing solo guitar is not only one of the most enjoyable ways of playing the guitar but as anyone that has played guitar for a while would know, it is probably the most demanding. The reason being is that there is nowhere to … Continue reading
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Guitar Fretting Hand Exercise
My last article was about a simple but worthwhile fretting hand exercise. But really, if you want to be a better guitar player, you’ll need something just a little harder. I’ve put together another exercise. This exercise will require a … Continue reading
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Guitar Lesson – Left Hand Exercise
I’ve uploaded a left hand (lefties the other left) guitar exercise, it is designed to strengthen the fretting hand, there is TAB and musical notation available in print format. It is quite simple to do this guitar exercise because it is just using fingers … Continue reading
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E Minor Blues Guitar Tutorial in Flash
I’ve written a very good guitar tutorial in Flash format. It’s a simple minor blues in E but it’s very very straight forward. give it a trial and tell me what you think by leaving a comment here. This format is … Continue reading
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Learn Guitar Warm Up Exercises
Guitar warm up exercises can be extremely annoying if you approach them from the wrong angle, with the wrong attitude. And when it comes to wanting to achieve anything, attitude is everything. I have uploaded a guitar scale / exercise … Continue reading
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Guitar Secret – Playing guitar duets
I remember a few years ago reading a great quote by a famous musician, it went something like, ‘the only thing more beautiful than one guitar is two’. Apart from the aural beauty of the sound of the guitar for … Continue reading
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The Greatness of Music
One of the wonderful things about music is its ability to be enjoyed by people across the world, regardless of any differences of any sort, whether they be cultural, religious, ideological, financial status or age group. It’s very normal for … Continue reading
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The best time to Play Guitar
I find that different times of day are suited for playing certain things. Over the years I’ve noticed if I get up early and start playing, it’s a very good time to practice things like slow exercises, reading very simple … Continue reading
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Learn how to read music
Over the past 20 years or so there’s been a tendency for guitar players to move away from reading music. As a strong reader of music myself, you might find it odd if I were to say that a guitarist … Continue reading
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Acoustic Guitar Player Survey
This guitar blog/site has been up and running for a number of months now and there have been over 6000 visitors. It would be appreciated if you could fill out the survey I have created to enable me to create … Continue reading
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How to get through a musical slump
Every guitar player or artist goes through slumps. Slumps are times when we’re not feeling creative, when we wonder why we are doing what we are doing, the creative juices are turned off and we think about giving it all … Continue reading
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What makes a great guitarist?
How to be a great guitarist, not just a good one. What is it that makes guitarists stand out from the rest? I think the music that I find most meaningless is music that sounds like everyone else. My approach … Continue reading
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Blues and Country Guitar Scales
Blues and Country Guitar Scales are easy to play. I have written a number of them in normal tuning. You will find them at http://www.the-guitarplayer.com they are in a printable format Acrobat Reader .pdf and are free to download. There … Continue reading
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