electric vs. acoustic

ok, this is seriously bugging me. i love both, and play acoustic. my coustin, who admittedly has been playing a lot longer than i have, fancies himself quite knowledgable about guitar. enough to be able to make the claim that electric is innately better than acoustic. i told him id show him how acoustic can atleast match electric, using a few keller williams songs to prove this. heres what he just told me in an AIM diologue...

"lol dude ur never gonna get convinced until u get good at guitar. you dont have the experience or exposure to make a statement like that... first of all, acoustic guitar cant "rock" by definition. its a mellow instrument. u can strum as hard as u possibly can and it still isnt gonna "rock". i think your problem is that you think something rocks because someone takes an acoustic guitar and plays 1000 notes a second. all that is is practice. i dont consider someone playing scales really fast talent... its a skill, and a skill that requires forever to learn. for anything u send me on acoustic i can send u something just as hard to play on electric and chances are it sounds 10x cooler.
u like pink floyd, look at david gilmore, one of the best, most melodic guitarists of all time. u wanna sound that good? ur never gonna do it on an acoustic. u need a deep sounding les paul with a sick, loud amp, and u'll piss ur pants at how good it sounds."


What do all you fellas think?

 

I think he's a stuck up jackass, but that's his own opinion.

Btw, I've done a few keller williams covers.

 

An electric may be better for hardcore death rock, but nothing beats a nice acoostic around a campfire, And yeh he does sound a little arrogent

 

1st off, Gilmour is a strat guy, I don't think he ever played an LP live or on an album.

Electric or acoustic; neither is better. Both have merits and disadvantages. I will say that playing an acoustic well is harder than playing an electric for many reasons.

 

heh... I've got fenders and a les paul... a 12 string... owned many acoustics. They're different animals. You can't put your finger on it until you've played both.

 

He's a dumbass. David Gilmour sounded fantastic on his live DVD, and what is he using there? An electric that is disguised to look like an acoustic? Shock horror!

I don't get what he's saying about the 1000 notes a second thing. First he's saying that he doesn't find that a talented thing to do, he considers it a skill...a hard-learnt skill that "takes forever to learn lol". So anyone who can do that would, presumably, be skillful? Which is synonymous with talented?

Rant over

 

i know, iv heard your stuff, quite good i must say

 

like someone said, there are advantages and disadvantages for both. i would have to say that learning to play an acoustic is harder then learning electric. but this doesnt mean that anything played on electric is easy. on an acoustic you learn scales (for example) that you use all over the fretboard in different forms. take this knowledge of scales to your electric and you can write killer solos. but these solos wouldnt sound as goood on an acoustic. i see it like one goes with the other when your the type who likes to play soft music at times and technical death metal the other like me. when i record some of my songs onto computer i sometimes have a slow intro, in which il use either my acoustic or classic, then il stop, pick up my electric and continue the recording with the distorted parts. withh all this said my awnser to the question of electic vs acoustic is neither one is better or worse, they are 2 seperate instruments which dont compare in styles or skills.

sorry for ramblin on too

 

that guy's an arse hole and doesnt know what hes talking about. and neither do i.

 

what what? we can't get more melodic on acoustic guitar? holy shit, that's amazing, considering a little period of time called the classical/romantic period. that's more melodic than ANY electric guitar music i've heard.
and also, for the record, dave gilmour isn't amazingly melodic. i'm not dissing that man, i love pink floyd, but there aren't all these intricate harmonies that are evident in romantic guitar. and more... i can play almost any electric stuff. satriani i am not as good as, but i'm only 15! jimi hendrix is overrated, as are many other guitarists. so he can play anything harder on electric, although i can play hendrix-style stuff, but can't play some classical pieces

your cousin is a stuck up, arrogant, big-headed git who is intolerable of music. he thinks he knows a lot about guitar? he could do well to actually LEARN to play acoustic. he might know a lot more after that.

 

good to know that you judge people after you know who they actually are

how do you know that he doesnt play the acoustic guitar?

 

I prefer electric just becuz I'm a metal player...but accoustics rock man.

 

I have played for - gulp - over 25 years. I have an old 1965 Fender Stratocaster, which is a hugely versatile instrument, and sounds gorgeous. I also have a cheap Seagull S61 acoustic, cedar topped which is beautiful, different, not as versatile per se, but has other advantages.

The acoustic is easier to just pick up and play, naturally enough! The stratocaster, I have to sort of make a decision, or be in a mood to play some blues or Hendrix (NOT a Gilmour fan, sorry ) or Led Zep. Also, the acoustic is rewarding in a different way, it sounds - playing with a bottleneck, for example - like 50% of the equation, the stratocaster being the other. Both sound fabulous, and both have advantages and disadvantages.

As to one being immeasurably better, I would not agree. As to acoustics not being able to 'rock'; that is plainly nonsense. Rock, like blues, is an attitude, as much as a definite sound or technique. You ever seen that clip of Hendrix playing an acoustic? Rock. Check these boys out www.ezio.co.uk They are simply incredible. Shred on an acoustic, or gentle meoldies. Class.

 

The only scales I ever bothered to learn were pentatonics. Everything else, I manage to pull out of my ass, and somehow, I manage, but I've had a natural ear for music and over the past few years, I can listen and hear the difference in voltages and I can tell wether my neighbor is running the table saw in his garage to his freezer just by knowing the sound of the frequencies when things in his garage and house are on or off...

But, nevertheless, it's not his decision. It's yours.

 

I'm a bigger fan of the acoustic. It's portable, and you don't need to plug it in.

 

Any fool can Jack into a Peavey, crank it up and blast the house down and think it sounds good.


On acoustic you really have to play.

Acoustic rocks and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, electrics rocks for different reasons.

Electric rocks because you could never sound like Hendrix on an acoustic, you need the fuzz and the dirt and all the other effects. You can still play like Hendrix on an acoustic.

Seriously, listen to the Acoustic version of "Creep" by Radiohead and tell me it doesn't blow you away.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

...Just start playing. Learn a few chords and play with someone who's maybe a little better than you. Don't learn from a book any more than you have to. Learning from other people is what music is all about. Pick up things and put them back together yourself. Use them to write new songs, to make new sounds, new chord changes, new time changes. Just create. Even if it's all shit, just keep creating. Pretty soon it'll be great.

 

neither are better. they're both different and both good. i have an electric and an acoustic. i love playing both of them. i like using electric for rock songs that have distortion and sustain etc. and i use acoustic just when i want to play randomly.

 

i prefer acoustic, it sounds more authentic.. and in my opinion, the purest music doesnt need any electric effects, but im just a retard lol

 

Acoustic vs. electric? Both. Maybe the cousin-in-question's tastes lean purely towards hard rock & metal, in which case his bias is understandable. I don't think acoustic or electric is really more "pure" or "melodic" than the other, it all depends on how you use the tools at your disposal. A strummed acoustic guitar will sound completely out of place if you're playing death metal and wailing distorted guitar wouldn't really fit with traditional Appalachian folk music. An amplified acoustic guitar run through several ring modulators and echo units might have a hard time fitting in anywhere.

You're not a retard at all, it's a valid opinion. What exactly do you mean by "purest" out of curiosity? Regarding effects, I think it's all about using whatever you have in your musical tool box as best you can to interpret and convey your own musical ideas. If that means singing and playing acoustic guitar, cool; if it means routing a looped electric guitar through a modular synthesizer and a bunch of computer plug-ins, that's cool too.