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.

Using Accents In Your Guitar Strumming

This lesson is going to take a look at adding accents to your strumming patterns. To do this we will take a look at a simple strumming pattern that will uses some basic accents. Throwing accents into your strumming patterns can help make your rhythm guitar playing much more expressive, dynamic and interesting.

When you accent a strum you are basically just playing that particular down or upstroke a bit harder than all of the other strums in the pattern. Accented notes are usually indicated by a little arrowhead symbol right below the notes. This may seem like an overly simple topic but I think that a lot of players underestimate the creative power of using accents in their playing.

Let’s take a look at a simple example to get the idea of how to start using accents in our strumming patterns. Play a simple sixteenth note strumming pattern with the “and” of each beat accented. You would count the strumming pattern like this “1 y and a 2 y and a 3 y and a 4 y and a”.  When you strum the “and” of each beat just dig in a little more and hit the strings harder in order to accent those strums. Make sure to use alternating down and upstrokes.

This example is pretty simple but it does a good job of getting the idea of using accents across nicely. Accents are a simple but often overlooked way to make your strumming patters more interesting and dynamic. When you are coming up with your own strumming patterns, or learning new ones from your favorite songs, don’t forget that you can kick your self-expression up a serious notch simply by using a few accents here and there. If you are playing with other musicians make sure to keep an ear out for what they are playing. The accents that other players use will often dictate the accents that you should use in your playing.

http://www.taylorguitars.com/blog/lessons-tips/using-accents-your-guitar-strumming-nate-savage

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.

10 Ultimate Guitar Tips

Improving on the guitar, for many guitarists, is the reason for playing the instrument in the first place. The warm, self-satisfied glow inside when you finally see the benefit of all those hours of practicing can't be beaten – but all too often those hours are meanderings in the dark: aimless and not actually all that enjoyable.
But it really shouldn't be that way. So this lesson (complete with tab) is designed to put some life back into your learning.

To bring you this lesson, MusicRadar's sister magazine Guitarist asked some of the top guitar tutors in the business for their wit, wisdom and home truths about what it takes to really improve your playing. You'll find 10 of those tips below.

1. Golden Rule: practice with a metronome

Great players have great timing, so practice with a metronome – every single time you practice. (Mike Goodman)

2. Know the intervals

Most guitarists don't know the notes on the fingerboard – which means there's no point venturing into the world of musical theory as you won't be able to apply it. Here's an exercise that'll get you knowing the intervals between notes in no time… The exercise cycles through the four triads in one area of the neck: witness the intervals as they change and then use the roots, 3rds and 5ths as a reference from which to work out where the other intervals are. (Mike Goodman)