Guitar Types and Styles

Teach Guitar – all types and styles of guitar are taught.

Teach guitar – There are many guitar types and styles of guitar playing. Some of the most popular are Rock, Acoustic and Classical.

Electric Guitar (Rock and Pop)

This style is usually played within a band on an electric guitar, although some artists use a steel strung acoustic instead. There are many variations of styles from Reggae, Heavy Metal, Classic rock, Indie & Ska etc.

The electric guitar is solid bodied and has steel strings with the strings being thin and quite close to the fingerboard to enable faster playing. There is an increased range of notes on the electric guitar to enable a greater range of tones for soloing.

Great electric guitar players are Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, BB King, Joe Satriani and Les Paul.

Acoustic Steel Strung Guitar (Folk, Blues etc)

Acoustic steel strung guitars are generally used for Pop, Blues, Folk, Ragtime, Rock and some other styles.

They are used for fingerstyle playing and strumming. 

Great acoustic guitar players are John Martyn, Bert Jansch, James Taylor, Jose Feliciano and Ed Shearan.

Classical guitars are strung with nylon strings on the treble strings and wire wound nylon on the bass strings.

Many musical styles can be played on the Classical Guitar.

The traditional position for playing the Classical guitar is to place the instrument on the left leg and use a foot stool to rest the left foot on allowing the head of the guitar to be level with the shoulders.

The thumb, index, middle and 3rd fingers are all employed for plucking the strings. In standard notation these fingers are known as PIMA, P=thumb, I=index, M=middle and A= 3rd finger on the right hand. Chords are often plucked, with strums being used occasionally.

Some players use their finger tips and other players prefer to use their nails.

Great classical guitar players are Segovia, John Williams.

To learn more about guitar types and learning to play guitar, contact Guitar Lessons Camberley.