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Excerpted from Gospel Songs for Fingerstyle GuitarPosted by Steve Baughman I have arranged “Go Tell It on the Mountain” here as an alternating-thumb piece with a bit of a bluesy feel. Those of you with lots of experience in Travis picking may find this arrangement quite accessible, and beginning alternating-thumb players should find this to be a good piece to get started on for playing a melody while you keep your thumb on autopilot (an essential skill for fingerpickers). As you tackle the arrangement, I recommend slightly muting the bass strings with your picking-hand palm to enhance the percussive groove...

Excerpted from Acoustic Rock Basics Many of the best licks and riffs by artists like the Beatles and Neil Young are really just made up of bits and pieces of easy chord shapes. You can use these same basic chord shapes to create cool riffs for your own songs. When you look at a simple D chord, you may not see all the potential within that three-fingered shape, but you can find countless great riffs within this chord—the Beatles crafted the instantly recognizable lines to “Norwegian Wood” and “Here Comes the Sun” based on the first-position D chord. Keep this...

Excerpted from Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers' Songwriting Basics for Guitarists: Free Writing Write first, think later. For songwriting as well as any other kind of creative writing, I’m a firm believer in this simple motto. Most songs come together in two stages: the creation, when the initial inspiration takes hold; and the editing, when you identify the good stuff, cut the bad stuff, and try to improve the stuff somewhere in between. The creation stage is all about writing whatever comes out, without filtering or second-guessing yourself. The editing stage is more rational and pragmatic, because you use your craft and any tools...

“Cracks in the top of a guitar ruin the sound" is just one of the common guitar myths we set straight in today’s excerpt from the Acoustic Guitar Owner’s Manual.   1. A guitar’s sound comes out of the soundhole. Anyone who has used one of those soundhole plugs to prevent feedback when using a pickup knows that acoustic guitars still make a lot of noise when you tape their mouths shut. The soundboard moves air both inside and outside the guitar when it is activated by string vibration, and sound travels through the spruce as well. Most folks agree that...