These videos are bonus content related to the April 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at our online store.
Percussive acoustic playing has been around forever, and it’s easy to see why.
The guitar is essentially a drum with strings stretched over it. (Its cousin, the banjo, uses a drumhead to cover the body.) As demonstrated in this issue’s feature on Andy McKee, Jon Gomm and Daryl Kellie, there has been a resurgence of interest in the percussive-heavy, alternate-tuned style of progressive acoustic guitar playing pioneered in the Eighties by guitarists like Michael Hedges.
Whatever style of music you play on the acoustic guitar, you can incorporate slaps, knocks, raps and other hands-on-wood effects into your playing that can enliven and add greater sonic interest to your performance.
In this lesson, I’ll show you how to harness some of the percussive possibilities that the acoustic guitar offers through a pick-free playing approach that I’ve adopted over the years. I’ll demonstrate how to integrate tapping and thumping techniques into vamps and grooves that also incorporate fretted and open-string notes and chords played using conventional techniques.
FOR THE REST OF THIS LESSON, plus photos, tabs and more, pick up the April 2014 issue of Guitar World, which is available now. The new issue also features "Knock on Wood: A New Generation of Acoustic Guitar Fingerstylists Are Blazing a Daring Style of Percussive Alternate -Tuned Shred" and a complete transcription of Daryl Kellie's acoustic take on Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."
For more about Errico, visit errico.com.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE