Some videos of Phil Phillips from American Idol!

I am an American Idol fan. So the guy in this video is Phillip Phillips. Phil Phillips for short. He's jus amazing. Take note of his playing. It's fabulous!

Phil Phillips in American Idol season 11 audition, singing "Thriller". The best thing is it's in acoustic version!

Phil Phillips top 8 performance

Some extra knowledge...

MINOR 7, SUSPENDED 4, SUSPENDED 2 CHORDS

Figure 1

By merely moving beyond the basic major chords - where appropriate - to other shapes aren't much more difficult to play, simple songs can take on added tension and atmosphere. Here are three other types of chord that are often found in songs, and can be useful mood builders. The minor sevenths are the minor version of the A7, B7 and so on previously shown. The Bm7 will yield an alternative Am7 if you take off the barre and move the fingers two frets down toward the nut. The little finger with F#m is optional.

The suspended fourth chords are often used to inject drama into song accompaniment because of their tension. In the case of Asus4, Dsus4 and Esus4 all that is required is to add a note to a simple major chord shape. The Asus2 and Dsus2 are popular because the reverse happens: you just lift a finger off a string that would usually be fretted for A or D. The sus2 is not as tense and has an open, "hollow" sound.

Figure 1

A MISCELLANY OF EFFECTIVE ACOUSTIC CHORDS

Figure 2 and 3

Here are 16 chords that sound great on an acoustic guitar. Some are created by either lifting a finger off a note with a common barre shape (Bmadd4, F#madd11, Fmaj7add11) or moving a chord shape up (D6/9, Amaj7), or are unique "voicings" - like the C which has a 12-string resonance because within it there are two Gs and two Es at the same pitch.

Also included are two first inversion chords - G/B and D/F# - which often feature in acoustic songs. First inversion simply means that the root note is not the lowest in the chord, the "third" above it is played instead - the note that is two tones higher than the root in a major chord. Try these out and learn the ones you like for your own playing.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Picture below shows an american finger-stylist Leo Kottke. A seminal instrumentalist and one of the true "godfathers" of the acoustic scene over the past thirty years. Running from folk, to jazz, to bluegrass, to blues, his work is consistently inspiring.

Materials are taken from the book Guitar.

Some other styles

One way to make your strumming more interesting is to pick some of the bass notes of the chords individually and then hit the chord, as the picture below:

This style is known as pick'n'strum. The bass note is usually the root note of the chord. Here is a well-known chord sequence that lends itself to this approach.

For this picture below,

the bass notes are not all root notes, though the technique is the same. Introductions to songs and links between choruses and verses sometimes feature a phrase played in single notes, wit chords in between, like:

A song like Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd or the intro to Led Zeppelin's Over The Hills And Far Away are examples of this popular approach to pick'n'strum.

Materials are from the book Guitar.