How to pick between an acoustic or electric guitar
Are you beginner guitar playing struggling to know whether you should start on the acoustic or electric guitar? Read on to find out which instrument will help you make the most progress when you first start learning how to play the guitar.
The big myth
First, I’m going a big myth that goes around amongst beginner guitar players. I’m not sure where this myth has come from, but it’s so untrue that it’s worth pointing out the facts so you can make a clear judgement based on the rest of the article with this in mind.
“It’s better to start on the acoustic guitar, because the acoustic guitar is easier to learn on, and then you get the electric guitar once you get better at playing.”
This statement is not true at all. Based on many reasons. As a beginner guitar playing, you are much better off starting with an electric guitar. Let’s see why:
The first thing, on either the acoustic or electric guitar, when you first start, you will have some challenges. These include your finger strength, your fingertips, your wrist and struggling to find the strings and knowing where the frets are. With this in mind, the electric guitar is much easier to play because it has thinner strings that are easier to press down while your finger tips have not yet toughened up yet and your finger strength is still weak.
And on the acoustic guitar, you have a big body that you have peer over to see your fretboard and see your strings to see what you are playing. This design doesn’t help your posture and makes the whole process much harder when you first start to learn how to play the guitar.
For these reasons, with an electric guitar, you are less likely to get tired and have pain when you are playing, so you can practise for longer. Making more progress early on means you can slowly gain strength and build up the toughness required in your fingers as your body leans to get used to playing the guitar. So with all these points in mind, it seems obvious that you would always start with an electric guitar. So let’s look at why this might not be the case for you.
Reasons to start with an acoustic guitar instead of electric guitar
There is only one big reason why you would start with an acoustic guitar, and that depends on the style of music that you want to play.
If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, you want to play acoustic style music, finger style songs. You don’t have any interested in ever ever playing the electric guitar because you don’t like it and for whatever reasons. Then get an acoustic guitar. You want to get one that you feel comfortable and feels easy to play on. This might be slightly harder in the beginner when you start playing for the reasons we talked about above. But the most important thing when you first start playing the guitar is you want to play an instrument that you love. You want to come home from work and see your guitar hanging on the wall or sitting by your chair and get excited about picking it up and practising for hours. If the acoustic guitar does that for you then you should definitely get an acoustic guitar when you first start.
If you ever want to play the electric guitar later down the stage then get an electric guitar for the reasons we stated before.
Do you ever want to improvise and solo on the guitar?
If you are into rock music and other type of music with lots of solos and improvisation. You get a great advantage with the electric guitar. This is because the electric guitar tend to have a lot more frets than an acoustic. Often acoustic guitars, when it goes past the 12th fret, you will find that the body of the guitar restricts you from playing the higher frets. This can really restrict you when improvisation and perhaps not being able to play certain solos because of it. If you love the idea of improvisation and soloing then an electric guitar will be highly beneficial to you.
My advice
I would personally always recommend that you get both acoustic and electric guitars if you are ever considering playing both at one point. I would start with the electric guitar and set some goals to achieve, and then get an acoustic later on down the line.
The most important thing to repeat once again is that you want to start on the instrument that gets you the most excited. If you are excited by both acoustic and electric guitars, then get the electric first. If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, then get the acoustic guitar. And whatever you do, stay persistent, and keep playing even when you’ve got struggles and challenges. The limiting factor when you first start learning how to play the guitar is not whether you have an acoustic or electric guitar. It’s whether you put in the effort and work into progress in your playing. That makes the biggest difference of all.
Are you wanting to start playing the guitar but don’t know where to start? Do you want someone to guide you along a proven path that you know will get you to where you want to be? Do you want to have the ability to play your favourite songs with ease?
We are here to help you progress at the guitar from beginner to advance. Whether you play the acoustic or electric guitar, find out how we can help you reach your goals by clicking on the button below to schedule your free assessment lesson. Where we will discuss how best we can help you.