How to select the right guitar for the job?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to give you guys a little insight as to the guitar selection process for each song that you make or record. 

Before we get into it, let’s have our moment of silence. 

At this time, I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to work hard at all of the things that we do. Ask God to strengthen our hands in our music, our blog, our college, our everything. Ask God to help us to honor him in the work that we do. Take a minimum of 5 minutes and pray for this. 

Now back to the show

How to select the right guitar for the job?

So it is without a doubt that different guitars do different things. 

An acoustic guitar sounds drastically different than an electric guitar, Semi-hollows are used for different genres, Nylon is almost exclusively used for guitar scholars and college performance. (Though it can and has been used for pop music in the past)

And like with many other music aspects, it sometimes takes a little careful consideration as to what to use. 

Anyways, let’s talk about these different guitars and when it’s the best time to use them. 

Acoustic

I almost exclusively write on an acoustic guitar. 

The thing for me with an acoustic guitar is that you can hear the chords being rung out. You can actually hear the notes that are played when you play something on the acoustic guitar.

I’m not saying that you can’t hear the same for an electric, but to me, I can clearly hear a G chord in my head right now on the acoustic guitar. 

Whereas on the electric guitar, it’s muffled with distortion and feedback. 

I write on an acoustic guitar almost all of my songs.

The rest of the songs that I write out, I write out on a daw with soft chords because to me it’s easier to hear the dissonance and harmony on softer sounding instruments. 

I’m not blasting my ears with an electric guitar. 

So I personally write songs on an acoustic guitar, but there are other reasons for using an acoustic guitar. 

Softer songs require a softer timbre and that’s what the  acoustic guitar has.

There is a saying in the music industry, the emotional songs are the hits. 

So obviously if softer songs require a softer timbre, then an acoustic guitar is the way to go. 

It makes great for emotional ballads and slow tempoed acoustic gigs.

Besides who wants to be that guy that brings his 50 pound amp and rig to a venue that wants chill music? It’s just not like that. 

Electric guitars

When you think of rockstars, you think of the electric guitar. 

The stereotypical electric guitar is either the Fender Strat or GIbson Les Paul.

Obviously this music world would go nowhere if it wasn’t for some umph in the songs every once in a while. 

Imagine a hard driven rock song, the instrument that you primarily hear is the electric guitar. 

That fuzz that you hear is called distortion.

Electric guitars were created so that a guitar could amplify it’s sound across a large room or auditorium. 

An acoustic guitar on it’s own is just not loud enough to sound off across a large room filled with people.

If you know anything about acoustics, you’ll know that the more people in a large room, the more the sound is absorbed into the clothes and everything else that doesn’t reverberate sound. 

Therefore, the electric guitar was born. 

The modern electric guitar is so much more advanced than the electric guitars of our forefathers. 

Back then, the pickups would literally pick up the acoustic noise that was plucked in an acoustic guitar. 

Now, the pickups are so much more advanced, 

They actually pickup the noise not from an acoustic sound, but from the body of the electric guitar.

If you ever notice, an acoustic guitar is big and hollow on the inside.

Whereas an electric guitar is smaller and is not hollow.

The reason why the electric guitar is not hollow is because it doesn’t need to be hollow. 

The pickups on the electric guitar pickup the noise from the reverberation that happens on the body of the electric guitar which turns into electrical signals into the amplifier and then back out as music. 

Woah there, I got lost in what I was trying to get at. 

Anyways, Electric guitars can be used for soft rock and rap. 

However, to use the electric guitar to it’s full potential, you would want to use some distortion on it and really treat it as a different instrument. 

Of course use it as a guitar, but treat the electrical parts as their own, they can do great things.

Remember that guitar is a rhythm instrument so though we like to use it for solos, it’s mainly used to play back up in a song. 

Just be creative on how you use it, the 60s players were very innovative in how they used their guitars. 

Nylon

Nylon, classical, flamenco, Spanish, whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same thing. 

I have heard great guitar players who started on a Spanish guitar. 

Tommy Iommi I believe started on a classical guitar, Slash did too. 

You can’t ignore the usefulness of a Nylon guitar. 

It’s the first version of the guitar.

Well I take that back, the first version of the guitar was a 12 string guitar.

But the first version of the modern day 6 string guitar has to be the Nylon. 

Nylon is used in pop music alright, obviously because of it’s soft timbre, it’s used to write soft songs. 

But for more aggressive music from a nylon string guitar, you need to look at college performances. 

They often times have guitar ensembles that specialize in using the nylon stringed guitar. 

As a guitarist, it’s important to draw inspiration from all styles of guitar play. 

For a nylon stringed guitar, they will pluck with their fingers as opposed to plucking with a guitar pick on electric or steel stringed acoustic guitars. This is where slash gets his famous hybrid picking technique. 

He alternates between using a guitar pick and finger style on the electric guitar. 

So it’s important that you research Nylon stringed techniques because they will come handy one day. 

Conclusion

In reality,  I could go over about the 12 different variations of guitars that I know but that wouldn’t cover all of the guitars that there are in existence in the world. 

So go out there and find your own guitar and just start practicing.

There was a slogan from Guitar Center one year and it said, “All we sell is the best feeling on earth.”

and I was like, “That is absolutely true!” They do sell the best feeling on earth. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!