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How Long Does It Take To Play Acoustic Country Guitar

By Mike Hayes | July 16, 2010

Country guitar playing is very exciting there’s a whole range of
styles of country guitar playing to choose from that ranges from
country rock electric guitar to pick-strum rhythm played on an
acoustic guitar.

How long does it take to play acoustic country guitar? To answer
that question we have to decide which style of guitar playing we
want to focus on. Let’s start by looking at our options.

Acoustic country guitar styles

* Acoustic pick-strum style

* Flat pick style acoustic guitar

There’s a lot more to choose from however these are the main
groups; now we will dig a bit deeper to discover what techniques
we need to learn in each style and that will help us determine
the time frame it takes to learn.

Guitar techniques for acoustic country guitar

* Acoustic pick-strum style

The most important skill to learn with this style of guitar
playing is your ability to select the correct bass notes; here is
a list of the alternating bass notes you will need to know, I
recommend practicing these bass patterns until you know them ‘off
by heart’.

The first letter refers to the type of chord, the first number
refers to is the string location of your first bass note, the
second number is the location of your second bass note.

Example: A, Am, A7 = 5 /6 /

Refers to any ‘A’, ‘Am’ or ‘A7′ chord will have the first bass
note played on string five and the second bass note played on
string six.

A, Am, A7 = 5 / 6 /

B, Bm, B7 = 5 / 6 /

C, Cm, C7 = 5 / 6 /

D, Dm, D7 = 4 / 5 /

E, Em, E7 = 6 / 5 /

F, Fm, F7 = 4 / 5 /

G, Gm, G7 = 6 / 4 /

How long will it take to play acoustic pick-strum style country
guitar; I’d recommend about six months (from a newbie player)
because you will need to give yourself time to learn the basic
open position chord shapes and co-ordinate your bass notes; you
will also need to learn the standard ‘three chord’ song
progressions.

Guitar techniques for acoustic country guitar

* Flat pick style acoustic guitar

This style is similar to the pick-strum style playing however it
tends to be mostly strumming without the alternating bass.
Bluegrass guitar playing could easily fall into this category of
country guitar playing.

The type of chords used in this style are quite often different
from that the standard open string chords, many chord shapes omit
the third note of the chord, here’s some examples of major chords
without the third.

G (no 3rd)
-3—-
-3—-
-0—-
-0—-
-x—-
-3—-

C2 (no 3rd)
-3—-
-3—-
-0—-
-x—-
-3—-
-x—-

here’s another way to play …

G (no 3rd)

-x—-
-3—-
-0—-
-5—-
-5—-
-x—-

This style of playing usually will take about twelve months to
get under control as you will generally encounter faster tempos
and need to learn a few country scales such as the major
pentatonic scale.

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