Sevens

7 Awesomely Unique Acoustic Guitar Covers

The acoustic guitar is an awesomely unique instrument. There aren’t many other non-electric, music-producing tools out there that are as versatile or as functional as the acoustic guitar. Sure, it’s simply a stringed instrument with a hollow body, but there’s much more to it than that. You can tune it up, tune it down, capo it, slap it, pop it, frail it, thump it, bend it, shake it–whatever, and the sound will always be different. And we haven’t even mentioned the influence of the shape, the wood, the design, the strings, or, of course, the guitarist.

There are many examples of the acoustic guitar’s dexterity (and of acoustic guitar players’ ingenuity), but some of the most fun illustrations are acoustic guitar covers, more specifically those that exemplify how the acoustic guitar can be used to play music that’s “not supposed” to be played on the guitar. A few of the cover videos below feature songs that have guitar parts in the original, but most do not, and they are all awesomely unique in one way or another. This list is intended for entertainment purposes only, and we think you’ll really enjoy each performance. So, without further ado, here are 7 Awesomely Unique Acoustic Guitar Covers, listed in no particular order (please share your favorites in the comments!):

7. Emily Elbert – “Thriller” (Michael Jackson)

Young girl with a lot of talent performing an all-time pop hit.

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June 7th 2011

Do Better Guitars Make Better Players?

by Pete Prown

Better Guitar Does the guitar you have chosen help make you a better player? Is your technique, or even your songwriting, influenced by your gear?

We talk a lot about the bands, musicians or albums that have influenced us, but not so much about how the equipment inspires us. If you’ve been playing for a long time, you’ve probably had opportunities to try various instruments, amps, and outboard gear. Each one can potentially alter the way you conjure sounds and, in turn, how you approach music. Like painting with a wide brush instead of a narrow one, or programming drum sounds instead of pounding on skins, tools and technology can influence art.

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Guitar Lessons

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June 7th 2011

Supercharge Your Chops: Part 4

by Brad Carlton

If you dig these video guitar lessons from Brad Carlton, click here to check out more.

In this 4-part video guitar lesson series, Brad Carlton explores 40 timeless tips from 40 guitar legends featured in Guitar Player Magazine. Each lesson explores a lick or an exercise in the style of a great guitarist complete with the video guitar lesson, power tab, chart, and more. Now dig in and supercharge your chops!

31. Jimmy Herring

This just may be the happiest sounding lick ever played. “When I was in Aquarium Rescue Unit, we had a mandolin player named Matt Mundy who is one of the best musicians I’ve ever heard,” said Widespread Panic, Allman Brothers, and Other Ones veteran Jimmy Herring. “He plays the most melodic things you can imagine. This is a traditional bluegrass melody he showed me.” (Tip: Pick the first note in the three-note pickup as an upstroke, and the strong beats will all be nailed by downstrokes.)

Click here to get the chart and tab for this guitar lesson.

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Guitar Lessons

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June 6th 2011

Supercharge Your Chops: Part 3

by Brad Carlton

If you dig these video guitar lessons from Brad Carlton, click here to check out more.

21. Jimi Hendrix

Inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s signature lick on the Buddy Miles tune “Them Changes,” (which Hendrix popularized with the Band of Gypsys), this greasy riff is a prime example of how Hendrix took standard R&B moves (which he undoubtedly mastered touring with the Isley Brothers, Little Richard, and other soul acts earlier in his career) and transformed them into an explosive, neck-strangling Strat style the world has imitated ever since. Start slow, lock into the groove, and play this over and over until you fall into a Jimi trance.

Click here to get the chart and tab for this guitar lesson.

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Guitar Lessons

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June 3rd 2011

Charlie Christian: Going to the Source

by David Hamburger

Charlie Christian was an unabashedly guitaristic player. Hot to go with one of the first commercially available electric guitar and amplifier rigs from Gibson, Christian cranked out burning blues riffs and proto-bop licks with impeccable tone and timing. In just two incandescent years with Benny Goodman’s sextet at the turn of the 1940s Christian established himself as the definitive jazz six-stringer of a generation before succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 23.

Whether with Goodman or at after hours sessions at Minton’s in Harlem, Christian’s astonishing eighth-note lines careened their way through routine cycles of dominant 7th chords with off-kilter chromaticism and upper extension 9s b9s, and 13s while his vamping, riffing and other blues ideas show a sure-footed, swinging sensibility and unflagging energy.

Charlie Christian’s music is the perfect remedy for any guitarist fearful of committing jazz. He favored a handful of fretboard shapes, and each one can be seen as an up the-neck version of a familiar chord voiced on the top four strings. While his ideas were hardly simplistic, Christian didn’t so much play scales or arpeggios as work from guitaristic major chord shapes, adding in the 6s 7s, and 9s that sounded good to him and connecting it all up with some slinky chromatic passing tones. Once you see how Charlie visualized these shapes up and down the neck, you can do it too, and save those three-notes-perstring, three-octave arpeggios for another day. Right now, let’s go to the source and see what licks we can glean from the father of swingin’ jazz guitar, and then look at how he would put them together into phrases and ultimately, entire solos.

Read on for the full guitar lesson including audio, tab, charts, and more…

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