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  #1  
Old 05-15-2018, 08:17 AM
Chickee Chickee is offline
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Hey cool cats,
Has playing acoustic guitar made you a better electric guitarist? Is your attack more accurate and toneful? Is your posture/grip different? Are your hands and fingers(meaning strength and flexibility) in better shape because of acoustic playing? Can you play longer without fatigue? Do you trade off during a session from acoustic to electric, or visa versa, and find it hard to adjust? Or is it totally opposite of that. Are you holding on too tight, overplaying your electric because it is such a different tactile feel than your acoustic? Or is a guitar just a guitar no matter? A simple mind wants to know.
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Old 05-15-2018, 08:34 AM
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I don't qualify as a "cool cat" but I will answer anyway.

No. It's made me a worse electric guitarist. Seriously.

I used to be quite adept at electric guitar.

I switched over exclusively to acoustic and have been really playing acoustic exclusively for five-ish years. I am really happy with my acoustic playing and with my main guitar I can elicit subtlety and nuance and sounds I want from it like an extension of my fingers.

I returned to playing some electric with a nice new guitar and I sound awful!


I know it's just practice and time to get those skills and sounds back but it's frustrating how bad I sound on electric now. My electric is nothing like my acoustic with respect to my fingers eliciting the tone I want.
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Old 05-15-2018, 09:24 AM
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electric might as well be a completely different instrument for me. I think I sound awful and I probably do. my acoustic playing can be vaguely melodic (at times), electric just sounds like a jumble of noise.
I am on a mission to try with a 'jazz' hollow body electric and the clean channel on my amp. perhaps that's cheating? idk. also I am jonesing for a tele that can cross between 'jazz' clean and electric 'dirty'.
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Old 05-15-2018, 10:50 AM
DungBeatle DungBeatle is offline
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I found it easy to move from acoustic to electric (had to lose the death grip though) but now that I haven't played my acoustic in about a year, I'm finding it difficult to go back.
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Old 05-15-2018, 10:59 AM
Dru Edwards Dru Edwards is offline
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I spent the past 4 or 5 years 95% acoustic. The 25 years prior to that I was mainly electric. I've now switched back to electric. I found that my alternate picking has improved on the electric due to improved flatpicking technique on the acoustic.
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Old 05-15-2018, 01:39 PM
muscmp muscmp is offline
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not at all. yes, i do approach the acoustic different than the electric but there are notes and chords on each. the difference being that there is an amp in the equation that has to be factored in.

play music!
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Old 05-15-2018, 02:01 PM
mr. beaumont mr. beaumont is offline
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I honestly approach both very similarly, for the music I play. I actually use heavier strings on my electrics than I do on my acoustics!

On both I shape the tone with my hands. I don't buy into acoustic being more "honest" or electrics needing to be put through little boxes to get "tone"...they're just colors in a palette. I love them both.
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Old 05-15-2018, 02:25 PM
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I think that playing mainly acoustic for so long mostly hurt my electric playing. I use a flatpick on mostly dreads. An electric requires much more finesse.
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Old 05-15-2018, 06:59 PM
Steel and wood Steel and wood is offline
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Great post.

I took close to four years worth of guitar lessons primarily on electric (playing and practicing mostly unplugged) before moving seamlessly to acoustic thereafter. (I always wanted to play both eventually and had my sights set on owning a Fender Stratocaster which I later added a Telecaster and a Martin acoustic).

I love to play both but they lend themselves to being played slightly differently. (For example and aside from normal playing, I like to cross pick with my Martin using high tempo Bluegrass backing tracks on YouTube but with my Telecaster I'm driven to mostly hybrid picking against rockabilly or high tempo country guitar backing tracks). There are certain things my Martin won't do that my electrics will (mostly string bends and vibrato) and at the end of the day because I'm primarily a country/rockabilly/American inspired guitarist, it permeates my playing whether I'm playing acoustic or electric.

Last edited by Steel and wood; 05-15-2018 at 07:10 PM.
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Old 05-16-2018, 02:06 AM
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For me the transition from acoustic to electric is easier than the other way around. Everyone is different, though. But yes, I believe playing acoustic guitar helps me be a better electric player, even though they are two different animals. I play both almost equally in amounts of time, whether at home or playing a show.
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Old 05-16-2018, 05:19 AM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is online now
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I cross between the two pretty fluidly but use quite different techniques on each out of the necessity of the instruments. There was a time in my playing where the transition was stark. I was rehearsing at least two hours a day except on performance days. I decided to try to break down the wall between the two. First, I put extra light strings on my acoustic and then I began attempting to play the same techniques on both. Both experiments were failures: the extra lights sounded thin and I simple wasn't able to reproduce every sort of bend I was able to accomplish on .009 electric strings on an acoustic strung a gauge higher. Besides, the acoustic needed to be plucked much harder i order to sound. So, I decided to simply carry over everything I could from each to the other.

Now I use many elements of each technique on the other instrument. I play fingerstyle on electric and bend as much as I can on acoustic. The two guitars are still quite different and require different technique but there is carry-over and more comfort in changing over mid-stream. And yes, I play both in a typical rehearsal session because chances are I'll use both in both live and recording situations.

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Old 05-16-2018, 05:56 AM
Golffishny Golffishny is offline
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I think playing both regularly helps both. I use .11's with a wound G string on my electric and lights on the acoustic to get a closer feel with both. I learned to lighten my grip on acoustic when playing in the same room quietly while my wife is watching TV. I got where I can hear it but she can't.
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Old 05-16-2018, 10:49 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chickee View Post
Hey cool cats,
Has playing acoustic guitar made you a better electric guitarist? Is your attack more accurate and toneful? Is your posture/grip different? Are your hands and fingers(meaning strength and flexibility) in better shape because of acoustic playing? Can you play longer without fatigue? Do you trade off during a session from acoustic to electric, or visa versa, and find it hard to adjust? Or is it totally opposite of that. Are you holding on too tight, overplaying your electric because it is such a different tactile feel than your acoustic? Or is a guitar just a guitar no matter? A simple mind wants to know.
Hi C

Being an acoustic guitarist has helped me immensely with my electric playing…even though I play them totally differently (style-wise). And the electric has helped me as an acoustic musician as well.

The inversions, chord/note/scale positions up the neck, and the ability to find and build upon the melody (or play harmony to it) started for me on the acoustic guitar. All that carries over to the electric.

I play electric with a much lighter touch, and effects, but the basics are still there from the acoustic experience I started and grew my skills with.

I seldom to fingerstyle passages on the electric, but I still play my electric guitars without picks. And my lead parts on acoustic are more sensible as the result of playing electric leads.

What's interesting is I've played gigs where another musician on stage hasn't even noticed I don't use picks till we've rehearsed several times and are at the gigs.

One's experiences and depth of knowledge on the acoustic certainly would seem to be a basis for improving what one does on an electric.


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Old 05-16-2018, 11:00 AM
Long Road Home Long Road Home is offline
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At the risk of going off on a bit of a tangent, as an acoustic rhythm player, I always figured that playing rhythm on an electric would be the same as on an acoustic. When I tried it on a PRS S2 Standard 24 that I had bought for my son, I quickly found out that what @jpmf describes as "a jumble of noise" applied to me.

Still wanting to scratch the itch, I set out to find an electric that had specs as close to one of my acoustics as possible. I recently picked up an Eastman T184MX semi-hollow - same nut width (1-3/4), same neck profile (I'd call it a medium C), close enough to the same scale (25") as my Eastman E6OM-LTD. I put a set of DR Pure Blues (11-50) which are pretty close to the Monels (12-53) that I have on the OM.

I now feel that I'm at least in the same area code on the electric as the acoustic.
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Old 05-16-2018, 11:45 AM
Gordon Currie Gordon Currie is offline
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I spent a number of years on electric before seriously pursuing acoustic. There are many techniques that are shared and a smaller amount that don't translate.

I've been switching so long I don't think about it.

A key element between them is use of a pick. I do hybrid and cross picking like crazy and that works well across both. There are some things I do only on acoustic like extensive fingerpicking. Bends of more than a semitone I only do on electric.

Because I've never dropped one for another, I think the effect on both has been positive.
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