Teacher uses electric guitar....

[Deliberate1]

Friends, I am about four months into my guitar experience and have been taking lessons with a local teacher who uses an electric guitar during our sessions. Last week week I asked him if I am missing anything given that fact. He assured me that there is no distinction when it comes to instruction. I cannot help but feel that there is. Your thoughts?
Thanks

[Gordon Currie]

I'm with your teacher. I can't see any *meaningful* differences in a lesson environment.

But clearly you suspect there may be. What do YOU think you might be missing?

[FwL]

I think anything missing would be due to the instructor's shortcomings in that department, not the guitar he's got sitting in his lap.

Now, if the person has little or no experience playing an acoustic guitar, he might not be the best guide as to technique requirements for that specific instrument. As far as which notes go where, there is no difference.

.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

Friends, I am about four months into my guitar experience and have been taking lessons with a local teacher who uses an electric guitar during our sessions. Last week week I asked him if I am missing anything given that fact. He assured me that there is no distinction when it comes to instruction. I cannot help but feel that there is. Your thoughts?
Thanks

Hi D

As an acoustic fingerstyle teacher who taught for 40 years locally, the early stages of learning guitar are going to be filled with basics that are not unique to acoustic or electric. The exception would be learning classical technique.

Chords, scales, fingerings, palm muting, strumming, plectrum, finger picking can all be done on both acoustic and electric instruments.

There are more advanced techniques later where paths begin to diverge.

Have fun learning and ask questions!

My teacher uses electric too — not always but very frequently — he is an awesome player of pretty much anything, including classical. Doesn’t make a difference, in fact I practice on one too. I used to have hangups on nut width etc but now I don’t particularly care because I have learned to adapt.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Gordon Currie

I'm with your teacher. I can't see any *meaningful* differences in a lesson environment.

But clearly you suspect there may be. What do YOU think you might be missing?

Thanks for all the replies. I appreciate that there are no material architectural differences between an electric and acoustic guitar. Chords are the same on both. A fret board is a fret board, after all. Technique may be the same as well. But an electric device is different from and acoustic one. Just as an electric piano is different from an acoustic one. My question arises out of a wonder if, beyond the obvious mechanical DNA all guitars share, coaxing sound from an acoustic box differs from a powered one.
Thanks again.

[Nama Ensou]

I see no problem with the instructor using an electric, but do potentially see a positive and negative side for you, if you were to practice your acoustic material on an electric.

Positive is that an unplugged electric is the best middle-of-the-night guitar in a house with other people sleeping. Negative is that the lower level of string resistance on an electric can leave your left hand on the weaker side if you don't balance it out with enough time on an actual acoustic.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Nama Ensou

Negative is that the lower level of string resistance on an electric can leave your left hand on the weaker side if you don't balance it out with enough time on an actual acoustic.

My tender fingers vote electric....

[Nama Ensou]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

My tender fingers vote electric....

LoL

I play both every day, but the one I can reach from the bed in the middle of the night is the unplugged electric.

[raysachs]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

Thanks for all the replies. I appreciate that there are no material architectural differences between an electric and acoustic guitar. Chords are the same on both. A fret board is a fret board, after all. Technique may be the same as well. But an electric device is different from and acoustic one. Just as an electric piano is different from an acoustic one. My question arises out of a wonder if, beyond the obvious mechanical DNA and electric guitars share, coaxing sound from an acoustic box differs from a powered one.
Thanks again.

So, how would you feel if he was playing an acoustic guitar plugged into an amplifier - "coaxing sound" can be rather different on a purely acoustic guitar and an amplified one. I think the role of a teacher in a situation like this, particularly if you're still in relatively early days of learning, isn't really about chasing tone or how you optimize the sound you're getting. He's really teaching you about music and how music works on a guitar fretboard, how chords are shaped, how scales work and interact with chords and keys and whatnot.

There may come a time if you become a really advanced player where you may want some instruction / help / advice on specific techniques specific to the acoustic or specific to the electric. For example, I tend to play rhythm quite differently on electric than acoustic, as befits the music I tend to play on an electric. I use a lot more slides and bends and vibrato when playing lead on an electric - you may come to a point where you want more instruction on some of those techniques specifically and it might be more appropriate for the instructor and student to play fairly similar instruments. But it doesn't sound like you're really at the "coaxing sound" stage of development at this point, with all of the subtleties that can sometimes entail.

Have you talked to your teacher about this? He or she might be better able to explain where it might make a difference and where it doesn't. I think it very rarely would in an instructional setting. OTOH, if you're using your instructor as a role model, someone who's playing you're trying to emulate, in that case it might be more helpful to hear what he or she is playing on a similar sounding instrument. But still probably not critical.

-Ray

[Deliberate1]

Ray, thanks for your thoughtful reply.
One thing I can stop fretting about, so to speak.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

My question arises out of a wonder if, beyond the obvious mechanical DNA all guitars share, coaxing sound from an acoustic box differs from a powered one.
Thanks again.

You're quite right. The sound of an acoustic is dependent much more on its wood, its acoustic cavity (obviously), and the usually heavier strings.
But there's not much you can do in terms of playing technique to expoit those differences - aside from subtle things to do with attack: how hard you hit the strings, where on the string you pick it (how far from the bridge). Those differences apply to electric too, but in a cruder way. Tonal control and variation on electric is much more governed by the pickups and the amplifier.

Naturally there are differences in what you can do based on string guage. Acoustics usually have heavier strings, because they produce a better tone as well as volume. That's not an issue for electric because its tone is mostly electronic (as is its volume obviously) - so electrics tend to have thinner strings to make it easier on the left hand. You can bend notes more easily on thinner strings.

Other issues are stylistic. Fingerstyle, for example. It works the exact same way on electric and acoustic, it's just that it's more of a tradition on acoustic.

But Ray is quite right - you should ask your teacher to explain those (potential) differences: not because you're worried about them, but just because you're curious!

[tonyo]

Sounds like a potential yellow flag to me. They are much different instruments to play. In the hands of the right teacher, not a problem. In the hands of the wrong teacher, I'd walk away.

[JonPR]

Just to add a tangent...

I once had lessons (in a jazz summer school) with John Etheridge. Everyone had electric guitars, including him. But he banned amplifiers. The only one allowed to use an amp was him.
As he explained, he'd got fed up with students noodling away, or just being too loud, or using a crap tone on their amps. Even a solid electric is loud enough without an amp, if everyone is quiet enough - as they should be. So he could hear us all fine. (It was around six students in a small room.)
Naturally he used very little volume, just enough to be audible, to demonstrate stuff.

[DesertTwang]

I agree with those who said that during the early stages of learning to play, the differences are unlikely to play a substantial role.

Later on, however, the techniques and playing styles between electric and acoustic diverge, and quite dramatically so.

Personally, I am learning and playing flatpicking style, and there is little, if anything, that is shared between electric and acoustic. To the point where I have given up on attempting to learn to play the electric, because everything is so different from what I'm used to that it's almost like learning a different instrument. In fact, I would probably feel more at home on a mandolin than on an electric guitar at this point.

The vast differences in string tension alone dictate completely different approaches in technique, let alone things like palm muting and other techniques that are not really part of flatpicking on an acoustic guitar.

So I think a lot of it comes down to musical style.