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.
Have you ever improvised using a tried-and-true scale—only to hit a note that just doesn’t sound right once a chord change comes along? Here’s a remedy for this common problem: By targeting the notes of a given tune’s chord progression, you can create solos that sound more copacetic.
For guitarists, ragtime can be a joyful excursion filled with fun and quirky moves. I’ve taken inspiration from Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, and the Reverend Gary Davis to piece together a composition I call “Pete’s Barrelhouse Rag.”
The chord trinity known as I–IV–V is one of the most useful theoretical concepts for any musician. The I–IV–V is a skeleton key for countless songs in folk, country, rock, blues, and beyond, revealing the basic similarities of, say, “Louie Louie,” “Ring of Fire,” “Man of Constant Sorrow,” and “I Fought the Law.”
Part 1 of this lesson focused on my ragtime piece “Pete’s Barrelhouse Rag”—inspired by the piano-based jazz-blues form that’s heavily syncopated and that was popular in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Now, as promised, here’s a look at three additional variations on the piece. Variation 5 returns to the standard eight-bar…
Passing tones are notes that don’t belong to the chord being played but can be used to add emphasis to chord changes and to create a more contoured bass line.
Learn to deconstruct simple chord shapes and progressions to create classic-sounding riffs with this lesson in the Acoustic Rock Basics series from Acoustic Guitar.
Carter-style guitar playing may be primarily based around first-position chord shapes, but within that simple framework there are plenty of ways to make the music come to life.
One way to add a coherent sound to your soloing is by using arpeggios. This helps in two ways: the repeating chord tones are always “correct” notes and playing the root, third, and fifth notes of a chord forces you to include interval skips in your playing instead of reeling…
This brief exercise is excerpted from Rhythm and Strumming Basics by Josh Workman. Let’s start working on some chord shifting by changing between G and C chords on each beat (Example 6). Allow your fingers to change as slowly as necessary for a smooth transition. If the open strings continue…
Some modern rock and pop tunes get a boost by injecting a laid-back groove with a 16th-note swing feel. Example 7a shows one common syncopated groove you can get with this feel, and Example 7b shows how you might embellish it to sound similar to Train’s hit “Drops of Jupiter.”
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.
