What to do next?

[bancika]

I've recently picked up acoustic after years of being electric only. Don't get me wrong, I'm rubbish on the electric too I can learn a song but know very little theory behind it all.

Since getting the acoustic I learned songs like tears in heaven by Clapton, bron yr aur and babe I'm gonna leave you by Zeppelin, some Blackmore's Night stuff... What do I do next? Any interesting songs you could recommend? How do I make any real progress? Lessons are not an option at this point, unfortunately.

Thanks!

[T1mothy]

I would really just keep playing the music I enjoy. It really just depends on what you want to play. Or how you want to play. Cant really give very specific answers to not very specific question. But to give you an idea lets say you strum few open chords and you want to start playing fingerstyle. Id look for some renown fingerstylists, find out what certain style / flavour you like and learn songs like that. If you want to get better at lead guitar Id just go have a look at various lead guys and be inspired from many genres. Like some not so hard to listen to jazz, gypsy jazz, blues, rock you name it. Also I cant recommend strongly enough learning stuff without tabs. Well I hope that helps. Timothy

[posternutbag]

I just posted in another thread that I often play Clapton's acoustic "Layla" when someone sticks a guitar in my hand and says "Play something!" I think it is a great song to learn for three reasons.

1) It sounds way more expensive than it really is.
2) It helps with barre chords, but if you are coming from electric, your barre chords are probably solid, so...
3) Solos. This song features 2. You could learn them note for note, or you could improvise your own solos over the chorus changes. This is what I do, and I found it a good stepping stone to soloing over more complicated and more rapidly moving chord changes. Justin Guitar has a very good tutorial on this song and learning to improvise solos over chord changes is something that separates good musicians from the really good ones. Learning a little theory helps this process.
Plus it is a flatpicking song and you seem to have gravitated to fingerstyle acoustic.