What are they playing?

as i explained in a previous post, i'm a relative beginner with respect to playing electric. i'm a long time acoustic guy.

when i'm playing acoustic, and i look at a song with the chords, i know what/how to play the chords. for example, if i see a G chord, i know i can play 330023, and this is pretty universal.

my question is - what do i play if i'm playing electric? what is it that i hear on the CDs? is it just power chords? or are there other ways to play chords besides the open and power chords? i suspect that it may depend on the song, but is there a universal chord "set" out there that i can go to for when i'm playing electric?

i just don't know what and how i'm supposed to play the chords when i look at a song sheet, and i have an electric strapped around my neck.

i hope this is clear. if not, just let me know.

thanks!

You can play the chords any way you want to. Barre-chords are very common. It all depends on the song and genre. I play a lot of open chords on the Tele. After all, it´s still a guitar, only electrified.

If you're playing electric and someone else is playing acoustic, it sounds nice to play different positions than the other guitarist is playing. Also, electrics sound nice when playing chords of only 3 or 4 notes, whereas acoustics sound good with all 6 srtings ringing out. So you can start experimenting with positions further up the neck. When he's strimming, try arpegiating, or perhaps reinforcing a melodic line or even the bass line. I like to stay out of the way of the other guitarist as much as possible. Whenever you have 2 similar instruments, try to think like an arranger, with each guitar having distinctly different yet complementary roles.

Stefan and Bucky make really good points here. I would add this; listen. Listen closer than ever before to the CD version of the song you are doing. Learn to pick out the acoustic guitar, the electric, the bass, the hi-hat, the kick drum, and separate them in your mind. You'll begin to develop an "ear" for music. Then try to cop what the guy on the recording does on electric guitar. After all, he's on the recording and you're not, so he's probably a better player. So learn by listening.

Definately a +1 to the posts above.

One thing I find, is that if you are playing with another guitarist, try to find opposite parts. If the other guiarist wants to play straight open chords, try playing power cords an octave up. There's times when you want to emulate a CD perfectly, but if an idea comes up at practice time, feel free to make your own arrangements.

As BuckyB said, you don't need to be playing all the strings to sound good on electric. In fact, it often sounds better if you're only doing 3 or 4 strings. On a lot of recordings, there's a part that's only playing 2-4 strings and is up pretty high (around the 12th fret). Try experimenting. Take your open chords and bring them up 12 frets. You probably can't play the whole open chord up an octave, so experiment with playing different notes from the chord up an octave.

I remember when I was starting out, there were a lot of guitar parts I could never get to sound right because I was trying to do 'em with open chords. Another thing is that your technique (especially how you hit the strings with the pick) has a significant effect on your sound. I also wasted a lot of time trying to use different settings on a modeler to achieve what actually came from my technique.

I am the only electric guitar player on our team and often play with two other acoustic guitarists. Niether are very accomplished, have cheap sounding guitars, and generaly play the same positions slightly out of "phase" with each other. Sometimes we have a violinist that plays the melody line about a quarter flat through every song,, non-stop,,,:confused: :roll: . We have two drummers that share the duties and two bass players, one of whom is loosing the use of his hands because of M.S. Sometimes I sit in on bass. We have a wonderful key board player that plays on our Baby Grand, when she's there we share the lead instrument roles and work really well together. When she's not there I am the lead instrument.
There are four of us that rotate leading worship, When I lead I still play my Belly Boy Tele but there is no lead guitar work,, I just shape the songs and tempo, staying on the neck position playing as if it were an acoustic guitar. I will sometimes use a little Tremolo and reverb as accents in certian songs. When I am the lead instrument I try to stay out of the way using short and I hope subtile phrasing with the occasional finger style or slide solo, and I keep that short. Sometimes it's not what you're playing on an electric guitar in this setting but what you're not playing that works the best.
Playing with other people is like making a pot of savory sauce,,, hopefully,,,sometimes it like a pot of kitchen sink soup,,, it's got everything but the kitchen sink in it. Find the tastiest licks and phrases that you know, seek out more of them, and use them to enhance the sauce wthout bringing to much attention to yourself as that can disrupt the flow of worship.

Nice answers and ideas.
I use a capo and cut capo at the same time, just to mix it up.
Both for electrics and acoustics.

I am the only electric guitar player on our team and often play with two other acoustic guitarists. Niether are very accomplished, have cheap sounding guitars, and generaly play the same positions slightly out of "phase" with each other. Sometimes we have a violinist that plays the melody line about a quarter flat through every song,, non-stop,,,:confused: :roll: . We have two drummers that share the duties and two bass players, one of whom is loosing the use of his hands because of M.S. Sometimes I sit in on bass. We have a wonderful key board player that plays on our Baby Grand, when she's there we share the lead instrument roles and work really well together. When she's not there I am the lead instrument.
There are four of us that rotate leading worship, When I lead I still play my Belly Boy Tele but there is no lead guitar work,, I just shape the songs and tempo, staying on the neck position playing as if it were an acoustic guitar. I will sometimes use a little Tremolo and reverb as accents in certian songs. When I am the lead instrument I try to stay out of the way using short and I hope subtile phrasing with the occasional finger style or slide solo, and I keep that short. Sometimes it's not what you're playing on an electric guitar in this setting but what you're not playing that works the best.
Playing with other people is like making a pot of savory sauce,,, hopefully,,,sometimes it like a pot of kitchen sink soup,,, it's got everything but the kitchen sink in it. Find the tastiest licks and phrases that you know, seek out more of them, and use them to enhance the sauce wthout bringing to much attention to yourself as that can disrupt the flow of worship.

Are you sure we don't go to the same church? :lol: Yup, cheap sounding guitars sounds familiar. The violinist that plays melody all the time non-stop. For years I've been playing lead in our church. It's very similar to yours. Most of the time it's me and the keyboard player that are able to communicate better and follow each others playing.

I stepped aside at the time being because the team has grown and it's probably time to hand over the ministry to the younger generation. Besides, I'm more concentrating on playing solo jazz guitar and thinking of transcribing some songs to jazz instrumentals.

Anyway, I didn't get the chance much to play with another electric guitarist. I would have wanted to. If you want to find out how more than electric guitars work, just listen and watch Hillsong DVDs. They have around at least 4 electric guitarist. I think what they do is play riffs & licks. Since the their music coordinator is a guitarist (watch some instructions on youtube), guitar parts are dominant and their music nowadays.

as i explained in a previous post, i'm a relative beginner with respect to playing electric. i'm a long time acoustic guy.

when i'm playing acoustic, and i look at a song with the chords, i know what/how to play the chords. for example, if i see a G chord, i know i can play 330023, and this is pretty universal.

my question is - what do i play if i'm playing electric? what is it that i hear on the CDs? is it just power chords? or are there other ways to play chords besides the open and power chords? i suspect that it may depend on the song, but is there a universal chord "set" out there that i can go to for when i'm playing electric?

i just don't know what and how i'm supposed to play the chords when i look at a song sheet, and i have an electric strapped around my neck.

i hope this is clear. if not, just let me know.

thanks!


Laundromat, you can easily learn some basic expansions of your first position chords. This will allow you to vary tonailty.
I suspect you know the barre E form, since you mention the 'power chord'.
The power chord is actually just the 6th,5th and maybe the 4th string out of that barre E.
Do you know the barre A form? Move the 4th, 3rd and 2nd string notes up a fret and barre at the first fret....Bb chord. I play this chord with the index finger fro the barre and the third finger playing the 4th,3rd, and 2nd string notes. I forego the high E string....kill it with the 3rd digit. The minors, minor 7ths and major 7ths form well in both the barre E and A forms.
Form the first position C chord...01023(high to low) with your 4th finger on the low C. Move this form up one fret and barre the first 3 strings with your index finger. You can do the same thing with the basic G chord.....you might have to forego playing the high E string. That gets to be quite a stretch for some folks.
Other than this, get a chord book. The first one I bought was '44oo Guitar Chords'. There are many forms for any one chord and inversions aplenty for enhancing the tonailty of the music. You might get a scale study book, also, since scalaes are the source for chords and understanding them leads to a better understanding of chords. Good finger exercise as well as mental exercise, too.

Wow, thanks everyone for the tips and pointers. i do know the power chord based off the 456 strings and the 345 strings, so i at least have those in my toolbox.

What are some songs that you'd recommend as good ones for someone learning to play electric?

Plenty of instructional stuff and tab on this site http://guitarpraise.blogspot.com.

Also some youtube stuff http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hillsong+guitar+workshop&search=Search

You can incorporate some of this riffs/licks in your playing specially when most of the team are playing chords. Most of these are just chord inversions but really gives different flavour to the song.

Enjoy.

wow, that's an awesome site - thanks for the heads-up.

i can play along with the tabs, but it doesn't quite sound the same... i guess i should look on the board for some recommendations for effects pedals. :)