Hi Richard. I’m early in learning to play blues and anxious to dig in as this is my favorite genre. Most of the lessons I’ve looked at feature electric guitars. I have a question that maybe deserves its own thread or even lesson: What is different or unique about playing blues on an acoustic versus electric guitar? I imagine blues techniques are used, adapted or emphasized differently on acoustic. Your thoughts? Thanks.
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I’m not Richard and don’t have his knowledge, but I have been working on some acoustic blues and have a few thoughts. These are generalizations that don’t always hold, of course (nothing “always” holds in music, does it?), but they might be useful anyway.
To me the biggest difference between electric and acoustic blues is that electric is usually played in a band context, while acoustic is often played solo. This means that the solo acoustic player will generally have to supply the rhythm together with the melodic part. Often this means fingerstyle playing, where the thumb gets a groove going on the bass strings (with palm muting) and fingers add licks (or a melody line in general) on the 3 highest strings.
In my experience, acoustic fingerstyle blues tends to work with open strings a lot. The keys are quite often E or A, where the open E and/or A strings are used a lot.
On electric (if playing lead), you needn’t worry about the rhythm, meaning you can concentrate on the melodic part, most often using a pick. This allows a lot of freedom to move around the neck (very high up the neck sometimes), because you needn’t worry about the bass notes.
Bending strings is harder on acoustic and is used much less. The 1/4 bend (blues curl) is very common, but full bends less so. Other forms of articulation (slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs) are common in both electric and acoustic styles.
Muting strings is less important on acoustic, since the sustain is so much less, string noise is generally not an issue.
Ok, these are just some random thoughts about the differences I have noticed. I’ve mostly been contrasting acoustic with lead electric, haven’t really mentioned rhythm electric.
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Thank you @jjw John for that summary. Full of information, tight and punchy like a good blues solo! It confirms for me why I’m drawn to solo acoustic blues (give me some Bonnie Raitt). I enjoy playing chord melodies and can do passable slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs on my acoustic. Bends and curls are yet to come. There’s so much to absorb watching videos of the past Blues with Justin club sessions. Back to practice…
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You’ve got the job!
That’s a great contribution John.
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Gee, thanks. Happy to contribute.
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A nice little one with acoustic setting which you could replicate with a looper
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Yes, if you have a jam buddy (or an electro-acoustic guitar and a looper pedal), that opens up more possibilities. In that case, the lead acoustic guitar is much more similar to the lead electric, for obvious reasons.
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Or throw on an acoustic blues backing track from YouTube if you have a decent speaker system.
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I would be all in on “Solo Blues Guitar” if the songs were traditional blues songs, instead of Justin’s compositions. No knock on Justin’s composing abilities, but it’s just more motivating if you are learning well-known songs. I suppose there might be copyright issues involved, but I would think that there of lots of blues standards in the public domain.
Maybe a follow-up course could teach such songs.
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Hi Richard … is there an change I can get this backing track as a mp3 please ?
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The tracks that are made by justinguitar on soundcloud often have a download file button that you can use once you create a free account on soundcloud.
This backing track gave me the file 03 Track 03.mp3
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But you need to grow an extra finger to play that one from soundcloud 
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Hi,
Bit late to this thread but finding it very useful as I am trying to progress my learning of basic blues.
Lots of great advice from Richard and others in these pages/ comments and your link to this old Justin very helpful - thanks.
Just wondering if you know if the improvisation that Justin played is available in tab format anywhere please?
If not then no worries as I will watch again - and again - and work it out😊
Thanks
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Hi Huw, welcome to the Community.
I’m glad this topic is proving useful to you.
It was an improv and Justin definitely won’t have transcribed a tab for it. If you’re up for the challenge, you could try yourself.
Hi Huw and welcome to this community and I can read Richards advice if you need help in doing this just ask and I will help you if you find it to difficult cheers Hec
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Hi Both. Thanks for quick responses and advice.
As suggested, I will give this a go myself - good practice.
Finding all the blues tips/ guidance/lessons etc very useful as I try to focus in on this ahead of thinking about any immersion in the future!
Cheers
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What does this mean by ‘in different keys’? Is this just playing the same licks but on fret 3 (for G) and fret 10 (for D)?
So for the first lick it would be frets 3 and 6 for G and 10 and 13 for D? Is that right?
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So whatever the Key the piece is, that will be the same Root note of the Pentatonic scale that your riff is based on for the most part.
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Spot on Stuart. The scale is movable as are the licks. Be guided by the fret position of the root note.
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