Acoustic Guitar Tips

This is a deeper, demonstration-heavy lesson: Alex plays through Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown’s “Hosanna (Praise Is Rising),” stopping along the way to explain what he’s doing, then recaps the six ways to use your acoustic guitar to its full potential. These are tools for your arsenal — pull them out when they serve the song.

1. Dynamics

The biggest one. Dynamics is the loudness and softness, the intensity, the complexity or lack of it.

Don’t strum all the strings, all the time — it doesn’t add anything, because it becomes monotonous.

• Strum shallow. Hit just three strings at first; then when you do strum all of them, it actually matters and the song has somewhere to go.
• Mute the right strings. This is non-negotiable. On a C chord, mute the open high E; on a D, don’t ring the open E or A. Strumming every string on every chord makes it sound wrong.
• Try finger picking for quiet song openings — and pick a common tone to keep ringing through your chord changes, because our ears like stability, they don’t like too much variety.
• Palm mute by laying your palm on the bridge so the strings don’t resonate, and vary the intensity. Great for thumpy, low-energy verses.

2. Strumming patterns

Go simple to complex as the song builds. In “Hosanna” he plays the first chorus with straight down-strums only, accenting the two and the four like a snare (bottom strings, then top strings on the backbeat). Later choruses add up-and-down strums and more complexity. So the song changes as it progresses instead of repeating. And a confession: most of us have one or two favorite strum patterns we lean on — learn some new ones.

3. Chord shapes (and capos)

It’s important to be able to play in the actual key of a song, in different shapes. Take “Come Thou Fount” in the key of D — you can play it in the D family, or capo up and play C-shape chords, or capo higher and play G shapes. Same key, completely different feel. Capture the feeling the song needs by choosing the right shape family. Beyond that, learn interesting voicings (a C up at the fifth position, alternate E minor shapes) and know your way around the neck so you can play the same chord high or low. (Alex points to the free capo cheat sheet and chord families cheat sheet at worshipministry.com.)

4. Walking notes

Use your lower fingers to play passing/walking notes between chords — up high or down low. He demonstrates with the bridge of “Everlasting God.” It adds ear candy, especially when you’re playing solo; with a full band you may not need as much.

5. Percussive fills

The acoustic is percussive in nature. Use it like a drum — snap a snare-like hit on the backbeat (“You are the God who saves us”) or add percussive fills between phrases.

A few more tricks

• Stop playing. Drop out before a chorus to suck the energy out, so the downbeat hits harder when you come back in. Let the band fill the space.
• Lay out a section. Play first verse, then drop out for the second verse and return on the chorus — it adds energy back into the mix and makes things feel different.

Utilize your guitar to its full potential — use your picking hand, your strumming hand, and your fretting hand to create movement, mood, and energy, instead of playing the same pattern over and over with no changes.

Application

• Take one song and map out its dynamic arc on paper: where do you strum shallow, where do you finger-pick, where do you finally open up the full strum?
• Be honest about your “default” strum pattern. Learn one new pattern this week and a simple-to-complex plan for the choruses (down-strums → full → complex).
• Try the same song in two different chord-shape families (capo it). Which feel best serves the lyric? Then add one walking-note or percussive fill where it serves a transition.