My acoustic loves me... my electric not so much

I love playing Neil Young songs on electric. they play so well. maybe it is because he is such a fantastic acoustic song maker.

Powder Finger, Country Home are two that come to mind.

You can play lots of songs on electric, either clean or with little drive.

Any country song will be a good choice. Simply replace the steel string acoustic with your clean electric. Feel free to add flavour of distortion on the fly.

Let me suggest some numbers -

1. Songs by Green Day, Ramones (for more dist. and drive.)
2. Coward of the County, The Gambler etc - Kenny Rogers
3. Any song by Alan Jackson
4. Songs by John Denver. Eg. Strum 'Leaving on a Jet plane' on your electric.
5. Songs by B B king. They use less drive and are great for bending.
6. Songs by Status Quo and Creedence Clearwater Revival. (I am sure Vic loves them.)

As far as your problem of not being good while strumming an electric, I think its natural. Electric guitar may produce many more noises than your acoustic does.
This is because, all your pick scratches, noise while chord changes also get amplified.

Just play along and have fun. And post some recordings for us, to have a better idea, as to where you are struggling.

Rahul

(Note - It is also important to know about the limitations of your electric guitar. Eg. suppose you have a Gibson SG or an Ibanez Floyd Rose, you will probably not want to do country with it. But with a Fender Tele, country is all yours.)

Hi Jim,

I have a couple of suggestions :)

And if you continue or return to the blues (you can use)? You can pratice leading with the electric and also some rhythm 12 bar progressions.

For rock, an easy song: Smoke on the water... fire in the sky... :D

Nuno

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

You are correct about the problem. Currently, I mostly know open chords and when I strum it just sounds muddy and noisey. This is the problem I am currently trying to correct. I am sure there will be many more in the future. LOL :D

I really like Creedence and also Nunos "Smoke" suggestion. My son is learning bass and can play that song. I am not as familiar with Neil Young but I love several of his songs. I'll have to play around with these and hopefully more suggestions.

I'll post some samples this weekend some time. Maybe it will spark some suggestions about what I am doing incorrectly.

Jim

Yep. Chords will usually sound muddy and nasty with lots of distortion. That just works for single note stuff, for the most part. Or "power chords," which are the root note and fifth, and blend well under distortion.

Geoo,

Sounds like your discovering that electric guitar is about controlling noise(s).

One of the songs I learned early on (still learning the solo parts) is very popular and fun to play is AC/DC's back in black. Its not that hard either, (except for the solos). The verse and chorus are way easy and with Open and power Chords if you want: E DDD AAA (pent riff) E DDD AAA etc...

Besides the obvious reasons, I like it because you have to absolutely control your chording and mute properly to get it right. For me it takes both palm and fret hand muting techniques to the silence between the chords just right.

Another fun one and relatively simple is Joe Walsh- Rocky Mountain Way. Same concept as there is 'space' between' most of the played chords AND these two songs don't get their due justice with an acoustic. For me they're electric songs all the way.

My .02 cents :)

Hi Geoo,

Try this thread.The same thing was asked and got some very useful answers. Some of them ended up in my "Copy, Paste and Keep file". :)

Acoustic v electric playing style

Cheers,

Chris

Dagwood,

I'll second the Back in Black idea. I just learned that and I'm working on the solos. For the most part they are pretty easy but there are a couple fast runs that still cause me some problems.

Another good one is Shook me all night long, only three chords and an easy solo that sounds great really cranked.

I was never into AC/DC but after working on these two songs I really enjoy playing them. I think I'm going to be ina little AC/DC mode for awhile

Thanks for the thread link.

I think I am trying to strum it hard like I do my acoustic. I'm also pressing to hard on the strings. I guess its like everything else, I am just going to have to practice and use it more if I want to get better. Thanks for all the song suggestions. I'll find something doable out of all those I am pretty sure.

Think I'll also look for a GN lesson on such a subject.

Jim

Another thing you might try (or did someone already suggest it?) is to get comfortable with all the inversions of the chords - like say open E, then play that 'D-shaped' E chord up on the 4th fret (well, it's actually 2nd fret, 4th string, 4th fret 3rd, 5th fret 2nd, and 4th fret 1st) then the 'open C-shaped' E chord with the barre on the 4th fret (same inversion really), then the 'A-shaped' barre on the 7th, then the E-shaped barre on the 12th and so on as far as you can go.

And then just 'see' what's happening on the top three strings of each of those shapes and start using only those. Like partial chords. And even if you play them with pretty heavy distortion, if you're on the treble pickup (or if you're on a Strat type guitar) and you hit the little 3-string-partial-chord with authority, it'll come out pretty clear. Lots of times with distortion/overdrive, the sound gets muddy in the lower strings (like fuzz on a bass guitar), and if you just play the top of the chords, they're a little easier to hear.

Besides if you wind up playing with a bass player, you'll make him happier (though that's tough with bassists generally) by keeping out of his sonic territory but using these 3 (sometimes 4) note chords and using different positions.

Hope this makes sense :)

It partially makes sense. I'll look up inversions or maybe Google it. Not familiar with that, although I have heard of it. When you say the "top three stings" do you mean the strings closest to my face or closest to my feet? YUP, that is why I posted this in the beginners forum, cause I'm a still a beginner

Jim

Oh yah, that's right; I meant the high strings, the G-B-E strings on top. "Top" and "Bottom" get mixed up these days.

But as far as the inversions, it's basically just the different chord shapes at different places of the neck (up or down) that are actually the same chord. Sorta like here - http://www.8notes.com/guitar_chord_chart/D.asp for the D chord.

You have that V-shaped open one, then that 'high backed chair' looking one (that's how I think of it actually) on the 5th fret, then that 'stairstep' looking one on the 10th fret. Higher than that and you get the V-shaped one again, etc.

That page has a few more listed, but they're just variations on those same shapes if you look just at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings - the V, the chair, the stairstep, V, chair, stairstep, etc.

And the same applies to the other chords.

And you don't have to get into all the #'s and b's either; just take your basic open chords and find the alternates elsewhere on the neck, and then keep in mind that on electric guitar you don't have to always play all the strings of the chord all the time. An electric, especially with lots of overdrive, already has a big sound to it because (I guess) all the harmonics that are being pumped up and added to the overall sound. So you can get away with using less and still have a full sound. Sometimes it's almost a requirement because if you use big, full six string chords, it can sound 'too' full, you know?

Geoo : If you are a fan of Pink Floyd, then learning inversions will be very helpful. They are the favourite pets of David Gilmour.

Here is a full (and a brilliant one) lesson on inversions.

And don't fear in using open chords with distortion either. Look here how Billie Joe Armstrong pumps out a strong version of Good Riddance (Time of your life).

What Demoetc said is good advice - and to expand a little on it, the D G and B strings make a pretty useful triad - they're an inversion of a G chord. Think of them as the 3 strings you play open when you're fretting a G chord. By adding an Am7 shape to them you can play any number of Stones riffs....check out Wes's tab for "Brown Sugar" in easy songs.

Partial chords are important to rock guitarists - power chords, 5/6/7 riffs (I'm sure there's a better way of describing them, but this is what I mean......)

.....A5...A6...A7....A7

E....x.....x.....x.....x
B....x.....x.....x.....x
G....x.....x.....x.....x
D....x.....x.....x.....5
A....7.....9.....10....7
E....5.....5..... 5.....5

The last of those is handy if you can't manage the 5-fret stretch.

It's also easy to play a I/IV/V riff using just partial chords.....

....A...D...E

E...x...x...x
B...x...x...x
G...x...x...x
D...7...7...9
A...7...5...7
E...5...5...7

There are lots more little tricks like that - some easy, some tricky - experimenting with different voicings for chords, etc.

:D :D :D

Vic