Category: Lessons

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Learn to Play Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Lightfoot recorded the song on a 12-string—specifically, a Gibson B-45-12—but it will work just as well on a six-string.

Adam Perlmutter September 22, 2023

Dom Flemons seated with acoustic instruments. Photo by Nate Kinard Jr.

Learn Dom Flemons’ Fingerstyle Showstopper “Rabbit Foot Rag”

This ragtime-inspired composition leaves a lot of room for improvisation and variations on the main themes.

Dom Flemons September 13, 2023

Special Focus: Slide Guitar

Exploring Slide Guitar Outside of Blues

Editor's Picks

Adam Perlmutter is the editor of Acoustic Guitar magazine and has written hundreds of articles, reviews, and song introductions (as well as expertly engraving and transcribing the music for a comparable number of lessons and compositions.)

It’s impossible to choose favorites, but here are a few lessons he’s worked on recently and suggests you check out.

Get to know Adam and the rest of the team better here.

Explore Our Guitar Lessons by Style, Technique, or Topic

All Lessons and Songs to Play

Closeup of hands playing acoustic guitar with pick

Rock Fingerpicking Pattern in 6/8 Time

Example 2 shows a pattern in 6/8 time, the way many players interpret the traditional classic “House of the Rising Sun.”

Andrew DuBrock
February 11, 2013

Video Lesson: How to Choose the Right Guitar Slide

The two classic slide materials are glass and metal. Some of the first slides were made from the tops of wine bottles (hence the term bottleneck guitar) or from lengths of pipe (hence the term . . . er . . . metal slide).

David Hamburger
February 10, 2013

Lesson: Guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps Offers Some Bottleneck Slide Tips (Video)

If I’m going to do a lot of fretting and slide at the same time, the big thing I’m working on is to not let the slide bar come away from the string.

Acoustic Guitar Editors
February 1, 2013

Learn to Play Chord Fills

There are an infinite number of licks that can be built with suspended chords.

Dylan Schorer
January 31, 2013

Musical examples from this guitar fundamentals lesson

Develop Accuracy and Coordination Between Your Fretting and Picking Hands

This exercise includes the fretting hand, and is designed to aid in coordination—the goal is to get both hands working together.

Ruth Parry
January 31, 2013

A Guide to Guide-Tone Voicings on Guitar

Guide-tone voicings have long been popular with jazz musicians, including guitarists Grant Green, Jim Hall, and pianist Red Garland

Sean McGowan
January 29, 2013

How to Harmonize a Melodic Line with Block Chords on Guitar

The technique of harmonizing a melodic line with full, dense chord voicings is sometimes referred to as using block chords

Sean McGowan
January 28, 2013

Learn a Solo-Guitar Arrangement of “Silent Night”

This fingerstyle arrangement is set in the key of A major.

Sean McGowan
January 23, 2013

This Excerpt from “Acoustic Blues Guitar Basics” Will Show You How to Play the Backbone of Blues, the Shuffle.

The blues shuffle rhythm has a kind of swing feel that always gets the party started and can be heard throughout the blues world. Here’s a look at the basic elements of this rhythm pattern. Blues Shuffle Basics There are a lot of different ways to play this beat. Let’s…

Orville Johnson
January 19, 2013

Learn to Navigate the Minor-Pentatonic Scale

Five patterns can unlock the fingerboard for both the minor- and major-pentatonic scale.

Andrew DuBrock
December 6, 2012

Bluegrass Bass Runs

Posted by Scott Nygaard After you’ve settled into the basic bluegrass and country boom-chuck rhythm pattern, you’re bound to start looking for something else to do with your fingers to help embellish different parts of a song. One easy way to do this is to add bass runs between chords.…

Scott Nygaard
November 26, 2012

Here’s How to Break Up Easy Chords to Create Rock Riffs

Many of the best licks and riffs by artists like the Beatles and Neil Young are really just made up of bits and pieces of easy chord shapes. You can use these same basic chord shapes to create cool riffs for your own songs.

Andrew DuBrock
November 21, 2012

Want to Play Like Johnny Cash? Learn the Boom-Chuck Rhythm in 3 Easy Steps

The boom-chuck beat is one of the first rhythms guitarists learn, and for good reason: you can play thousands of acoustic-guitar songs in this style.

Chris Grampp
November 20, 2012

The Art of the Blues Turnaround

Many classic blues turnarounds are built on a simple phrase that descends chromatically (ie, in half steps) from the minor seventh to the fifth of the I chord.

Ron Forbes-Roberts
November 16, 2012

Play a Ragtime Blues Thumb Roll

One of Blind Blake’s signature rhythmic ideas was a “thumb roll” in the bass. This quick note before the downbeat of the measure adds a unique bounce to the groove. To pull it off, let your thumb roll off the lower string, come to rest on the next one for…

Orville Johnson
November 7, 2012

Play a Syncopated Fingerstyle Rhythm

This asymmetrical alternating bass groups the eighth notes into two groups of three and one group of two in what is sometimes referred to as a 3–3–2 pattern by playing the bass notes on beats one, two-and, and four of each measure.

Alex de Grassi
November 7, 2012

Play the Spanish Classical Song “Bolero”

Andalusian-born Julian Arcas (1832–82) was perhaps the greatest Spanish classical guitarist of his time. A composer and performer, he is best known for teaching the legendary guitarist/composer Francisco Tárrega. Arcas’s friendship with guitar builder and fellow Almerían Antonio Torres contributed to the birth of the Torres classical guitar design, a…

Patrick Francis
October 17, 2012

Cross-String Picking Basics

In third position or higher, it becomes possible to combine open and fretted strings to play ascending/descending intervals on nonsequential strings.

Alex de Grassi
October 17, 2012

closeup of hands playing an acoustic guitar

Use Sus4 Chords in Your Acoustic Rock Compositions

A sus4 (or “suspended fourth”) chord substitutes the fourth note of the chord’s corresponding scale for that all-important third.

Andrew DuBrock
October 16, 2012

Acoustic Blues Guitar Basics | Acoustic Guitar Champions

Orville Johnson teaches the techniques, progressions, and rhythmic patterns used by acoustic blues guitarists.

Orville Johnson
July 5, 2012

Peppino D’Agostino Talks About his Percussive Techniques, Unusual Alternate Tunings, and the Importance of Melody

Peppino D’Agostino’s approach to guitar incorporates the entire range of modern fingerstyle techniques—from exotic alternate tunings to percussion and two-handed tapping—creating multidimensional layers of sound that often seem impossible to execute on one guitar. But it’s his lyrical, romantic melodies, tinged with slightly exotic harmonies and delivered with a combination of emotion and fiery energy, that catch listeners’ ears and draw them in.

Doug Young
June 15, 2011

Fiddle Tunes and Folk Songs | Acoustic Guitar Champions

Learn to flatpick the melodies to ten traditional fiddle tunes and songs, with simple melodic variations and performance tips.

Scott Nygaard
September 5, 2010

Rhythm & Strumming Basics | Acoustic Guitar Champions

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Josh Workman
July 5, 2010

Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics | Acoustic Guitar Champions

Explore the haunting sounds of acoustic slide guitar with this easy-to-follow, step-by-step instruction series.

David Hamburger
January 1, 2001

About Acoustic Guitar lessons. Learning to play the guitar takes more than just figuring out what fingers go on which frets and which strings to pluck or pick. You need to absorb these mechanics, for sure, but you also need to know how different techniques fit together and how you can put them to use in service of making music with soul and spirit. Memorizing your favorite players’ licks and arrangements is an essential part of the process, too, but all that work doesn’t truly pay off until you’ve internalized the moves and made them your own. The players and teachers whose words and music are shared on this site understand these facets of learning and offer unique, in-depth lessons. Here, you’ll find riffs and exercises, full songs to play, technique tips, listening suggestions, and advice on how to practice as well as what to practice. We’ve been publishing high-quality guitar lessons since 1990, written and developed by some of the best guitar teachers around.