Paul Davids Acoustic Adventure TUTORiAL

My course for intermediate guitarists is designed to help you bring your acoustic guitar to life while learning the “crème de la crème” of various styles and techniques, so you can spice up your playing and have more fun practicing than ever before!

Choose Your Own Adventure
Unlike my other courses, this course has no set order you need to follow. Instead, you'll have freedom to explore whatever style or technique you feel like playing, whenever you want to play it.

Not only will you choose for yourself what skills you'd like to work on each day, you'll also be able to choose your own level of challenge within each area of study. The lessons will be arranged in order of difficulty (from easiest to most challenging) so that you can take on big goals in manageable steps.

So, whether you're looking for something that you can already play easily, or want to take on a new challenge, you'll always be able to choose your own path.
Learn Through Immersion
Every skill or technique in Acoustic Adventure is taught through beautiful and incredibly fun original songs and exercises (written by me!).

Just as we become fluent in a language by speaking it, rather than just reading the dictionary, you will become fluent on guitar by playing new things in songs that sound great.

That way, you'll not only get some great techniques under your belt; you'll also come away with lots of tunes you can pull out at your next get-together.
Grow as a guitar player while having fun

Acoustic Adventure gives you the “map” to explore a wide variety of styles and techniques and lets you decide for yourself what to take on.

While working through the course, you will:

Bring out the best of your acoustic instrument
This course will be taught entirely on the acoustic guitar, because so many of these techniques and styles evolved through acoustic playing, and because it's the best type of guitar to play by yourself. I'll show you how to get the best sound (and overcome some common acoustic challenges) on the instrument so you can have the clean and resonant sound you've always wanted.

Get familiar with many techniques and styles
The “greats” of guitar were all able to define their sound by first getting to know the foundational techniques and styles from the past 100 years. In this course, you'll become comfortable playing many of those styles, so you can take your playing further – whether you're playing the greatest hits of modern guitar, or creating your own personal and unique sound.

Practice more than ever before
When you dive into this self-directed adventure, every piece you learn will be a great tune to play for your friends and family. You'll find yourself playing more and more without even trying to, just because you're having so much fun – and the extra practice will make all the difference in becoming a better player!

Here's What You'll Learn Inside Acoustic Adventure:

The 68 lessons inside the course are grouped together in five different “venues”. Each one has its own focus and flavor, so you can explore whichever techniques and skills you're in the mood for that day.

Fingerpicking Lounge

In this venue, you'll learn all the picking patterns you need to feel comfortable playing fingerstyle guitar – one of the coolest and most rewarding playing styles on the acoustic.

Some of the things you'll learn in this venue:

The basics of a solid fingerpicking technique
Essential picking patterns and techniques for adding variations
Multiple styles of fingerstyle blues in different keys
Travis picking and pedal tones
Playing melodies on top of chords
Plucking, slapping, and bass notes to create a “rhythm section”

The House of Rhythm

Go beyond “campfire strumming” with lots of great techniques that will make the guitar swing like never before!

We'll cover the following (among many other things):

My best tips for keeping time
Using different techniques to create a rich and dynamic rhythm sound, like a muted/percussive strum to simulate a snare drum, palm muting, and more
Adding walking bass lines to “walk” from one chord to the next
Adding variety with passing chords, extensions, and rhythms to get the most out of playing chords
The classic rhythm of the 12-bar blues

Flatpickers Saloon

Add a new layer of interest to songs with flatpicking, a magical ingredient for guitar playing.

A little taste of what you'll practice in this venue:

Using licks and riffs to fill the gaps
Economy picking vs. alternate picking
Adding embellishments to chords and songs, using pentatonic scales in various positions
Creating an interesting sound with barre chords, fast runs, pull-offs, and hammer-ons
Mixing scales like major, pentatonic, and even Mixolydian!

The Stage

Time to jam! Play original songs I wrote especially for this course, covering the techniques you'll learn in the other venues.

A few of the things you'll get to play:

A piece in 6/8 based on triads and inversions, with a cool chromatic descending bass
A film soundtrack style piece to set the mood, with bending and syncopated rhythms
An extended version of my “legendary” Travis picking song, with a B-part I've never taught before!
A classic bluegrass tune with fast runs and blues notes, mostly using the Mixolydian mode
A slow blues with the “thumpin' string method,” to spark the imagination

The Academy

Need a quick refresher on guitar fundamentals and music theory? Then head here!

Some of the things we'll cover:

The basics of strumming, picking, and getting the sound you want
Open pentatonic shapes, and major and minor scales
The classic I - IV - V progression
How to use pentatonic boxes for every chord
The step-by-step strategy for a precise percussive slap

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