Video Guitar Lesson 16, part 1: Ideas for an effective solo acoustic performance

Guitar Lessons with Tune in, Tone up!

In this lesson, Dan helps me out with some planning for a performance I have been asked to do for my sister-in-law’s wedding. I am performing several songs at the front of their service some of which they have chosen and some of which they have asked me to come up with. As there is a delay on publishing our episodes, this comes after I have actually done the performance and it went very well, particularly because of Dan’s excellent advice and suggestion to use a looper pedal which I followed. In the end, the performance was of the following songs: 1) ‘Something’ by the Beatles: Played while the wedding party awaited the arrival of the bride 2) ‘Textbook’ by We Are Scientists: Played as my sister-in-law walked up the aisle 3) ‘Pretty Ugly Before’ by Elliott Smith: Played while the register was being signed 4) ‘I Don’t Want to Know’ by Fleetwood Mac: Played as everyone left Most songs were played using my Boss RC30 to create a long loop, then some layers added to this on the fly along with some melodic playing and improvisation. On ‘Textbook’ the Looper was not utilised but I used reverb, chorus and a bit of delay to build the atmosphere. The acoustic amp I use is the Marshall AS100D which is great and has an effects loop with the downside of being very heavy. I the lesson Dan demonstrates some mixed lead and chord playing, which works very well (when he does it). He gave me lots of useful advice and we’ll return to this in part 2 when I take along my RC30 to gain some input on how best to use this in the performance. Dan, as always, is very generous and helpful in his advice. Timings 00:03:24 A quick look at the two acoustics we are using today 00:11:32 Start of getting stuck into the topic of the wedding numbers I've been asked to play 00:13:50 Elliott Smith - Pretty Ugly Before 00:15:58 Dan suggests using a hammer on and pull off instead of the slide 00:16:49 Dan suggests a focus on the importance of the melody 00:18:50 Doing fills over certain chords 00:19:09 A good suggestion to build the looper pedal into my plan for the performance 00:20:03 Play through the song again with Dan adding some improvisation and fills over the top 00:25:33 Quick rundown of Dan's Taylor 314 00:26:49 Dan demoing playing chords as a backdrop and playing a melody concurrently 00:27:54 Second demo of this dual part idea 00:33:25 Advice to pre-prepare and think a lot about the chord changes - play to the chord played over 00:35:18 A quick discussion about the tonality centres found within Elliott Smith's Pretty Ugly Before 00:37:18 Some useful discussion about what to consider with regard to song choice for different scenarios