Lessons | Acoustic Guitar

Freddie Green and his Stromberg Master 300 with Helen Humes, circa 1940, Photo courtesy of the Freddie Green Collection

The Captivating Harlem Swing Rhythms of Freddie Green, John Trueheart, Bernard Addison, Morris White, and Al Casey

Freddie Green is synonymous with swing guitar. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1911, Green enjoyed a 50-year career holding down the rhythm chair of Count Basie’s famed big band.

how to make cover songs feel like your own on guitar illustration

7 Tips to Make Cover Songs Feel Like Your Own

As a songwriter, do you stick to your guns and your own songs—or cave and just deliver the hits everyone can sing along with? There’s a healthier way to look at covers: as a creative vehicle that can actually enhance rather than compete with your songwriting.

David Hamburger-12 Ways #12 – Improv.00_00_10_01.Still001

12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 12: Improvising on the 12-bar Form

Learn how to use the form of the 12-bar blues as a roadmap for your improvising and give your blues solo a sense of logic and musical development.

Cathy Fink, seated with guitar, teaching a lesson on strumming

How to Add Bass Lines to the Boom-Chuck Guitar Strum

Learn how to use different kinds of bass lines to add variety to boom-chuck accompaniment in the keys of E and A major.

man playing acoustic guitar, the learning zone

12 Ways to Challenge Yourself and Discover New Territory on Guitar

We talked to a group of artists and educators who share their favorite exercises, strategies, and tricks for helping get beyond the comfort zone and discover new territory on the guitar.

person holding a guitar with a capo strumming

Video Lesson: How to Use a Capo to Play Music in All 12 Keys

The capo is a small but powerful tool for guitarists that raises the notes of the open strings but retains the individual relationships between strings. Here's how to use one.

W.C. Handy holding a horn in a 1941 portrait by Carl Van Vechten

Arranging W.C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” for Fingerstyle Guitar

Guitarist and W.C. Handy scholar Jon Shain shares strategies for adapting ragtime pieces for fingerstyle guitar using the 1917 Handy song "Beale Street Blues" as an example.

Jane Miller seated teaching a weekly workout lesson on her acoustic guitar, photographed in a studio with a microphone in front and a grand piano in the background.

Weekly Workout: Using Triads to Negotiate Seventh Chords

Learn to use three-note, three-string triads — you probably already know a lot of these chords, and in this lesson, you’ll find ways to repurpose them.

Learn a Simple Guitar Arrangement of the Scottish Folk Anthem “Fortune Turns the Wheel”

"Fortune Turns the Wheel" is simple, and the sung melody needs little in the way of instrumental propulsion, so the guitar setting is spare in this arrangement.

ron jackson seated with a guitar for guitar lesson on harmonic and melodic minor scales

Weekly Workout: Building Colorful Chords from the Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scales

In this advanced guitar lesson, meet the melodic and harmonic minor scales and then explore the harmonies that can be generated from them.

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