The picture shows me with my new Sire S3 Stratocaster. The guitar strap arrived today, allowing me to impersonate ZZ Top. Perhaps the beard is to come.
I had my first serious electric-guitar lesson with Stuart yesterday, having already done some practice on the rhythm part of Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love. I remarked that, in both feel and playing style, the electric guitar might almost be a different instrument from the acoustic. It simply feels entirely different.
Stuart emphatically agreed. For electric blues and rock, he said, the thumb often curls over the top of the fretboard to play bass notes. Full barre chords are frequently avoided, partly to leave the other fingers free for embellishments and lead lines. The whole fretboard is in play, particularly its higher reaches.
With the acoustic guitar, by contrast, the emphasis is on open strings and chord shapes close to the nut. The hand positions and chord formations are therefore often quite different: partial chords on the electric, fuller chords on the acoustic, together with a host of other technical distinctions.
This has plainly increased my practice burden. I remain very keen to improve my acoustic fingerstyle technique, which is still fairly atrocious, while also making myself at least vaguely performable on the electric guitar.
There is therefore plenty of work to be done before my next lesson, after the summer break, in early September.
