Guitar Playing Styles to Explore and Master

Guitar Playing Styles to Explore and Master From classical and jazz to hard rock and the avant-garde, take a tour of the instrument's near-limitless potential.

By

John Mirisola

November 15, 2021

Image by Dave Green

Committed guitarists know the feeling: You're developing your technique, you're internalizing music theory, and you're gaining confidence as you explore the fretboard. This fundamental set of skills that every guitarist is constantly working to hone-the proficiency, as Berklee's Guitar Department calls it-is the foundation for your playing in every style. But now you want to gain an understanding of what makes one style of playing distinct from another, so that you can begin to build your repertoire and develop your own distinct voice on the instrument.

This guide will help you understand the different musical approaches a serious guitarist can choose to explore and master at Berklee. Maybe youve always had a love for the blues, or youve been inspired by lightning-fast metal shredding. Perhaps its the grooves of funk and R&B that speak to you, or the flow of jazz improvisation, or the intricacies of a classical composition. Maybe you want to explore a new style, or you dream of mixing styles together to create your own approach.

Whatever your direction, this guide will help you understand the different musical approaches a serious guitarist can choose to explore and master at Berklee, home of the largest and most stylistically diverse guitar program in the world. Well also share wisdom from some of the 52 players on faculty here, each of whom has crafted a unique, versatile personal sound drawing from the traditions below and is dedicated to passing those skills on to their students.

Every guitar style is valued equally here, and of course, new styles are born whenever innovative players decide to bring unfamiliar sounds together. So ultimately, the choice is yours: What kind of guitarist do you want to be?

Take a tour of the guitar styles taught and practiced by Berklee faculty in this YouTube playlist:

Blues Guitar The Sound Blues guitar is the root of so many styles that flourished over the past century. Rock, jazz, funk, soul, metal, pop, bluegrass, country, and many forms of contemporary guitar playing all draw from blues influences, and the history of blues as its own genre is richly varied. Students of blues guitar at Berklee study the whole range of this history, from the pre-World War II days of ragtime, delta blues, and boogie-woogie, through Chicago and Texas styles, rockabilly, country swing, hard rock, and the styles current innovations.

Become the Guitarist You Want to Be

The Guitar Department allows you to balance the technical with the artistic, all in service of helping you find your voice as a player.

I felt an immediate connection with the blues music I was initially exposed to, says Dan Bowden, professor of guitar. I felt the performers I listened to understood my experience in an exciting and appealing way that left me feeling good and wanting more. As a young guitarist I heard elements of blues guitar in much of the music that appealed to me and that was being played on the radio, so I was well-primed for when authentic blues guitarists came to my attention.

The Skills If youre committed to blues guitar, there are a handful of guiding principles all students need to learn: the development of repertoire, vocabulary for soloing, a musical touch, phrasing, tone, pacing, and groove are all inherent to blues guitar studies at Berklee, says Bowden. There are also a number of specific techniques that blues guitarists are constantly working to perfect, including slide guitar, fingerstyle playing, string bending, double stops, dyads, rhythmic phrasing, and rhythm guitar grooves.

The Next Steps One of the best ways to dive deeper into any style of music is to join a group of other players dedicated to the same repertoire. At Berklee, blues guitar students can join performance groups dedicated to the music of greats including Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and more.

You can also listen to the work and wisdom of contemporary masters like those on faculty at Berklee: Michael Williams, Chris Bergson, and Dan Bowden.

Classical Guitar The Sound

Berta Rojas

The guitar has been defined as a small orchestra, explains Berta Rojas, associate professor of guitar. Holding such sonic potential in their hands, its no wonder that many guitarists find themselves drawn into the world of classical guitar, with all its intricacies and its rich lineage. The classical guitarist uses the little orchestra at their fingertips to interpret and express musical ideas-old and new-in fresh and exciting ways.

I feel attracted to the complex writing of classical pieces; they open up to you in layers that never seem to end: always refreshing, always challenging, says Rojas. Classical is a style in which the majority of the pieces, at least those written before the more experimental techniques from newer music, were thoroughly composed. Every note has been thought of. We have the job of giving life to those masterpieces, finding new meanings, new avenues in the search for our own version of them.

We have the job of giving life to those masterpieces, finding new meanings, new avenues in the search for our own version of them.

-Berta Rojas, professor of guitar

The Skills All classical players have to be heavily invested in developing their tone and the overall sound of their playing, and to their right-hand and left-hand techniques. There are countless techniques, says Rojas. Scales, arpeggios, pizzicati, tremolos, colors that go from dark and obscure sounds you can produce near the sound-hole to the clarity obtained when playing near the bridge, tambora effects when you use t

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