Dynamic Guitar

What you’ll learn

A companion to the acclaimed Beyond Strumming, the Dynamic Guitar book/video series features six multimedia lessons with scores of examples inspired by classic songs.

• Dynamic Arranging

• Slash Chords

• Play Bass

• Cluster Chords

• Double-Dropped-D Tuning

• Explore the Three-String Capo

Includes more than two hours of downloadable video instruction.

From the introduction

It’s no wonder that acoustic guitar is the tool of choice for so many singer-songwriters and musicians of all kinds who accompany songs.

Even with no other instruments, the acoustic guitar can deliver rich chords, lay down a powerful groove, fill out bass lines, and add hooks and riffs, and it can also be as quiet, delicate, and dreamy as you like. The guitar can be literally a band in a box—no bandmates (or electricity) required.

Getting this full-spectrum sound out of an acoustic guitar, with the versatility and range of a band, entails going beyond the go-to accompaniment technique of basic strumming. Strumming is essential and effective on the guitar, for sure, but it also has real limitations and can overpower the vocal and the groove. By varying the technique of both your fretting and picking hands—and often by playing less—you can do so much to make your guitar parts more dynamic and musically satisfying.

That’s why created I’ve created an extensive series of lessons on accompaniment for Acoustic Guitar magazine: to give you an array of tools for making chord progressions more distinctive, deepening grooves, and getting outside the box of strumming block chords.

My book/video guide Beyond Strumming offers 20 lessons, from the fundamentals of strong accompaniment to more advanced techniques like cross picking, hybrid picking, and alternate tunings. Now comes Dynamic Guitar, which shares six more vital tools for making the most of your guitar as an accompaniment instrument.

In these lessons, you’ll learn how to build dynamics in an arrangement, how to play bass lines on guitar, and how to expand your chord vocabulary with slash chords and cluster chords. Plus you’ll discover the possibilities of double-dropped-D tuning and the three-string partial capo—an amazing tool that allows you to create alternate tuning–like sounds without actually retuning. Along the way I share all sorts of examples inspired by classic songs, so you can hear and see how these tools work in actual music.

I hope you’ll find many ideas here you can apply to your own arrangements—and maybe they’ll spark your songwriting too.

Happy playing!

—JPR