| When first learning to play guitar, one of the biggest | | | | right. Acoustic guitars are often used for blues, jazz, |
| decisions that people face is whether they want to | | | | country, and even occasionally some rock. It’s just |
| start learning with an electric guitar or an acoustic | | | | a matter of how you play it. Acoustic guitars have a |
| guitar. Both have distinct characteristics and sounds, | | | | much purer sound, forcing you to play notes and |
| and favor certain styles and genres of music over the | | | | chords cleanly, thus improving on your technical playing |
| other. So how should one go about making this choice | | | | ability. Once you begin to learn more chords and |
| between electric and acoustic? For some it might be | | | | become more proficient at picking and strumming, you |
| obvious, but for others, there are some major factors | | | | can begin to experiment with how they sound. Do you |
| that should be considered that we will explore. | | | | strum them hard, or softly, or strum a couple of times, |
| Let’s start with electric guitars. | | | | pick some notes, then strum a couple more. The key |
| Electric guitars are used largely for rock music, and | | | | aspect of acoustic guitars to remember is that the |
| unlike acoustic guitars are very forgiving. This can be | | | | notes ring clear, making it not only great sounding, but |
| both a good and a bad thing. What I mean by forgiving, | | | | great for learning on. |
| is you can strum a chord slightly wrong, but with the | | | | There is a third choice you could look into, and that is |
| distortion and other effects that can be achieved with | | | | getting an electric/acoustic guitar. This is an acoustic |
| electric guitars, it will be almost unnoticeable. This is | | | | guitar with a build in pick-up for plugging into a guitar |
| good since your playing will sound that much better, but | | | | amp. I have personally not used one, but they are |
| bad in that it will make it difficult for you to improve on | | | | worth looking into if you are not sure which guitar type |
| your technical skills as a guitar player. What you | | | | you want. The benefit of getting an electric/acoustic |
| can’t hear, you can’t fix. One of really great | | | | guitar is that you can switch it up to play any genre of |
| things about electric guitars that I just mentioned | | | | music. I believe that the quality of sound is not as good |
| however is the ability to add distortion, or other effects | | | | as a normal acoustic or normal electric guitar, so you |
| to your playing. This allows for a large number of | | | | may sacrifice sound quality for versatility. Most |
| different sounds, which can be really fun to play with. If | | | | guitarists end up learning on an acoustic guitar, then |
| you want to rock out, you will probably want an | | | | moving on to an electric guitar if they want to play |
| electric guitar. | | | | some rock. In my opinion, this is the smartest way to |
| Acoustic guitars are used in a number of different | | | | learn, but if you just wanna rock, then you know what |
| types of music, and can be very versatile in their own | | | | to do. |