Need advice

Hi Greg,

I just started a little over a month ago and have some of the same issues. In my whole month of experience, I've found that practicing on the acoustic built up callouses faster, and when I go to play on the electric it's a lot easier.

My wife goes to bed fairly early because she has to get up around 4 am. So when she goes to bed and I want to practice I turn on the electric and put the headphones on.

If I'm not mistaken, your VOX should have a headphone jack in the back.

Cheers,
Landog

I started lessons with an acoustic. After about 2 months and a little struggle, I was getting comfortable with both chords and melodies, just could not get the barre chords. Then I picked up a used Les Paul electric and it was a lot easier. Now the process for me is to practice about 80% on the acoustic with new material, getting the music down and then pick up the electric for a while. All my lesson time is spent on the acoustic.

I think the majority of guitarists would agree that electric seems easier when you've learned on acoustic - lower action, faster, thinner neck etc on the electric....

There'll be times when you're struggling with something on acoustic, you might find it easier on electric - if you can do it on electric, sooner or later you're going to be able to do it on the acoustic, so in that sense the electric is a great morale-booster.....

:D :D :D

Vic

GeeDeeBlues said, All my lesson time is spent on the acoustic.

I started on acoustic and it was a few years before I got a good electric.

I always seem to gravitate to the acoustic when I see something new to try, the electric is easier to play but if I can do it on an acoustic then I know it's easier on the electric.

That's how I learned to play barre chords, if I can do them on the acoustic then the electric is a piece of cake!

I've raised 5 kids and noise was never a problem, my son told me years later that when heard my caterwauling with the acoustic, he knew that I was home and everything was all right! (he's 29 years old now! :shock: )

Why can't you learn playing both? Is it state law or something? Take your lessons on the acoustic and when the kids to bed pull out the electric and fool with it.

As a (beginner) guitarist, I say learn both acoustic and electric and play whichever one you're in the mood for, and some of each as often as possible.

As a mom, I say don't worry too much about the baby hearing you play. Acoustics aren't all that loud, and once the baby gets accustomed to the sounds of soft music from the room next door, it'll become part of the fabric of his/her life. My early years I was lulled to sleep by the hammering of the keys of a manual typewriter as my mom was/is a journalist and wrote her stories after we were all tucked in. One offshoot was that I was typing my own "stories" (v e r y s l o w l y) by age five. :D

You could also close the child's bedroom door. Going off on a short tangent here, as my job involves safety training and disaster response. All bedroom doors should be closed tightly when the family goes to bed anyway. In case of fire, closed bedroom doors save lives by blocking smoke and buying time for smoke detectors in the hall to activate. Too often, victims are overcome by smoke/fumes before the detectors have had a chance to alert them. If you start closing their doors when your kids are young, they will accept it as normal and not be frightened by it. You can use a baby monitor if you want to be able to hear every sound from the child's room. OK, lecture over.

Enjoy your guitars, both of them! 8)

Margaret

now thats a great mom (margret), and a dedicated guitar player,i love to play both and i try to influence my students to learn both you can't go wrong either way 8)

Which ever you want to use. :P For me I started on accoustic, but hated it and eventually just quit. I didn't know anything about guitars and the one I was using had really high action and was just a bear of a thing to play. A while later I decided I wanted to try again at learning guitar and took the horrible accoustic down and traded it on a Telecaster with a good setup and it made a ton of difference and really helped me play more and learn faster. All this happened before I even knew what the word "action" and "set up" even meant, but I still have no desire to play accoustics to this day. :x

Acoustic by day, electric by night - that would be my advice.

I am with the both crowd. I have never seperated my guitars into groups before. I just think.. Hum, I'd like to play electric tonight, or man... to much work to plug in the amp.. where is that acoustic.

Many of the songs that are acoustic songs sound fine on my electic. I just have to make it clean and not hit it so hard.

Its harder to play my more electrical song (distortion/effects) on my acoustic but I do that too. Sometimes it sounds pretty cool.

Just play.. its all fun

Jim