Category: Lessons

The Latest

How Great Literature—and Simplicity—Can Inspire Depth in Your Music

Poetry and literature can serve as a wellspring of inspiration for musicians and composers alike.

Charlie Rauh December 3, 2023

fingers on guitar fretboard alternate tunings

A Beginner’s Guide to Alternate Tunings

It can be intimidating to change all the notes that you’ve worked so hard to learn, but the new sounds and new ideas you’ll discover make it worth the effort.

Doug Young November 24, 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

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.