Guitar Tricks Blog

Going unplugged adds a degree of intimacy to a song that approximates playing in one's living room or around a campfire. If you are creating a solo acoustic version of a song that's played by a whole band, you'll need to compensate for what the band provides. The following are some tips to help you adapt an electric piece to an acoustic guitar and make it every bit as compelling as the song it's based on.

Playing in position helps to build strength and dexterity in the fretting hand and allows you to better express your musical ideas on the guitar. Check out these tips to get you started. 

 Now you can jam AND sing along!

Developing the habit of regular practice on your instrument is the most important factor in how you will improve as a guitarist over time. As with any good habit (the bad ones are easy to acquire), building the initial momentum is the hardest part, so here are a few tips to help get the ball rolling.

Most guitarists at some point experience periods of burnout—that feeling of being uninspired, unmotivated, completely uninterested in playing your instrument. If this is you, if your guitar is gathering dust in some corner, try some of these tips to help resuscitate your practice

Biographies ground us and help us to see the reality of trying to earn a living as a musician, which is often very different to what record companies and magazines would have us believe. These books give you invaluable insight into what things were like for your heroes before they made it big. You'll learn about the sacrifices and risks they were willing to make, the many failures they suffered, and how they overcame adversity to ultimately turn lemons into lyrics. In the process, you'll discover how you can develop work habits to maximize your own unique abilities, tendencies, and traits.

Influential doesn't always mean "best." Influence is the power to have an important impact on someone or something. In the case of these guitarists, they have had an important impact on not only guitarists and musicians, but on culture and society.

I had just gotten off work. I fished my phone out from the bottom of my bag and checked messages as I walked to the car, and there it was. Word from my cousin in Tampa: Glenn Frey RIP. Three stark words that stopped me dead in my tracks. What? For a moment I wasn't sure I had read right...

What more can be said about David Bowie's passing that hasn't already been said? The six heart attacks he survived, the liver cancer so few knew he suffered from, the messages embedded in Blackstar that portend his demise, his final album on track to becoming his biggest record ever...

As you know, Guitar Tricks is the most comprehensive one-stop-shop guitar resource online. Now we're branching out so you can learn songs on the guitar AND see the lyrics so you can lead those singalongs!

Here's our second installment of highlighting independent music shops this holiday season!