10 Tips For Playing An Acoustic Guitar Live

Stand out from the rest of the open mic crowd...

It's essential reading material for anyone who owns an acoustic guitar, but if you have already made the jump into the world of live performance, here are 10 tips for playing an acoustic live that will make you stand out from the rest of the open mic crowd:

1. Be nice to the sound engineer

The nice man or lady on the desk has The Power, so always be polite and respectful, even if they are treating you like a total amoeba. Learn their name, use it, and thank them before you leave.

2. Put your tuner on the floor

As well being in tune (hooray!), your floor tuner will also enable you to mute the guitar when you're mumbling between songs [Oh, and don't mumble between songs]. It might be a separate unit, or built into your floor preamp/effects unit.

3. Buy a new battery

Yes, they're ridiculously expensive, but that battery in your guitar needs to be fresh to provide signal. Change it (or them) regularly and always have a spare in your case/gigbag. Anything less is amateur night.

4. Stand up!

Unless you're famous enough to not have to and/or you're on a high enough stage where people can see you, stand up while playing. Your body is more open, you'll be more animated to look at and if you sing, the air has a better chance of coming out.

5. Bust the 'back

Your guitar may have a manual notch filter on the preamp, which is there primarily to fight feedback.

Improve Your Guitar's Tone For Better Performance

1 Pick Out a Winner

Many underestimate just how much their choice of pick affects their tone. Not so with jazz legend Jimi Hall, who carries a pocket full of them in different gauges: light ones for strumming, heavier ones for single note picking. Indeed, switching from a medium to a heavy pick, while requiring an adjustment of technique, can do as much as to thicken your tone as installing a humbucker in the place of a single-coil pickup.  (Meanwhile, opting for a light-gauge pick on a strummed acoustic in a band setting well help the part sit better in the mix.) And you can't complain about the cost-there's no cheaper way to change your tone.

2 String for Your Style

Strings come in flavors as well as gauges. If you're seeking a classic jazz sound, flat-or half-rounds will get you close to it without to spring for an arch-top.  And if you want to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan, .009s ain't going to cut it-try using at least .011s. You'll also want to tune down a half step, not only to further deepen your tone but also to ease the added string tension that come with bumping up your gauge.

3 Learn to Unwind

If you play really loud or with gobs of gain, stay away from over wound pickups-they'll only muddy your sound. A lower-output pickup, on the other hand, will help maintain clarity while the volume and gain, or both, supply all the girth and sustain you need. The greatest rock tones of all time-including Eddie Van Halen's "brown" sound were created with relatively weak pickups.

4 Go Wireless

In other words practice without plugging in. The reason being, you want to make sure you're not using the mask of high gain to cover sloppy or uneven playing. Try to get the best sound possible out of your instrument before you plug in, with just your fingers, and the rest will follow.

5 Speaker Up

Perhaps you like the way your old combo feels when you play, but just aren't crazy about its tone. Well, before you trade it in for a new one, first consider changing its speakers. A more efficient speaker model can make a huge difference: in addition to taming nasty high end or beefing up the lows, it can actually make your amp louder.