I’ve played with them before and I just play my guitar as usual. just making sure I am easy on the volume. I play the same chords they do and usually the same or a similar rhythm. they usually have differently tuned instruments in the group, anyway. there’s usually a u-bass, sometimes a banjolele, oftentimes baritone uke, and so on. not even counting other guitars, mandolin, or others that show up sometimes. all tuned differently.
only difference is that my chord fingerings are different. sounds pretty good, tbh, as the guitar brings some extra depth at the low end.
I expressed my concerns to the local guitar group and they’re including just about all of them. I conveniently reached out about this just as they were looking at making changes, so it was easy for them to roll my ideas into it. I’ve been included in a team of facilitators handling the management of the beginner jam group. That way, there’s less reliance on a single person running it, so people feel less stress over organizing things and if someone is out of town or needs to step back, it’s no problem.
So now I’ve offered to revise the songbook a bit to include chord charts on all of the song sheets and maybe also a few things related to making it easier for beginners to find suitable songs from an organizational standpoint. Also hopefully we can work out some improved distribution of it so more folks actually use it, so there’s less reliance on printouts.