Learning to play songs in different keys by actually transposing and understanding the resulting chords and melodies can transform your guitar playing.
Make chord progressions more distinctive and get outside the box of strumming block chords.
Stay Loose and Avoid Injury by Developing a Guitar Warm-Up Routine
12 Ways to Challenge Yourself on Guitar
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.
Using a triadic approach to mapping the fretboard can help you break out of ruts and develop a deeper understanding of the guitar and music in general.
This lesson breaks down Watson’s acoustic flatpicking, beginning with rhythm and backup, transitioning to his lead playing, and ending with the combination of the two.
Learn to play fast on acoustic guitar by practicing slowly; make sure that you play everything with 100 percent accuracy before bringing it up to tempo.
Here are some of the evocative sounds you can create using chord voicings with notes that are close to each other—just a half step or whole step apart.
Poor posture can lead to back and neck deterioration and neuromuscular disease in guitarists. Here are some steps to help keep you healthily seated with your guitar.
“Most of the time I have no idea how the music comes from my fingertips while writing. It’s not like I’m going for some genre or sound. It just happens!”
Although John Hurt’s style and repertoire are often imitated, his guitar sound is hard to duplicate. In this lesson, Steve James teaches you how to play like Mississippi John Hurt.
One of the pleasures of DADGAD and other open tunings is letting open strings add lush extensions to chords, as in this arrangement of "Wish You Were Here."
When used properly, a looper pedal can transform the sound of your acoustic guitar into something new and beautiful, while making your performances more dynamic.
With its character-driven narrative and fingerpicking guitar, “Just Like That” taps into Raitt’s love of the folk ballads of her songwriting contemporaries.
Whatever your experience level, here are a few tips that will set you on a direct path to being able to play your favorite pieces without relying on sheet music.
While hybrid picking lends a certain definition and crispness, especially on the bass notes, straight fingerpicking will work equally well on the two pieces.
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.
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