Is Electric Guitar Simpler to Play than Acoustic? Which One Is Right For You?

1. Electric Guitar Vs Acoustic Guitar: Which One Is Easier To Play?

Here are some advantages of both electric and acoustic guitars.

• Overall comparison

Electric guitar benefits	Acoustic guitar benefits
The necks and strings of an electric guitar are thinner. As a result, learning them is a little bit simpler.	You only need the guitar and a few small accessories to play an acoustic guitar. Compared to electric, you might need to purchase an amp as well.
Low-volume practice is more accessible with electric guitars. Many parents are concerned that introducing electric guitars to their children will result in eternal noise in the home. However, this is untrue. Low-volume, headphone- or even unplugged-only electric guitar practice are all options.	Acoustic guitars allow for a little more focus when first starting. There are no distortion or volume controls. This allows a student to concentrate on learning the instrument’s fundamentals.
Electric guitars are more adaptable than acoustic guitars because there is a smaller variety of sounds that can be achieved with effects.	Acoustic guitars are portable so that you can play and practice anywhere.

• Barre Chords

Source: Canva

When it comes to barre chords, acoustic barre chords are more complex. Acoustic guitars are much more difficult to press down and have thicker strings. Barre chords call for powerful fingers. An acoustic guitarist’s job thus gets a little more complicated.

• Genres

Choose a guitar that fits your style. Different guitars are better suited to various musical genres. You should pick up the electric guitar if you enjoy rock, metal, blues, and punk music. However, if you want folk, bluegrass, singer-songwriters, or country music, you should pick up an acoustic guitar.

Guitar Sound on an Electric

Electric guitar strings makes a very faint sound when they vibrate. Acoustic-style sound chambers are absent from solid-body guitars. Electric guitars use pickups to get around this.

A coil of wire is wrapped around a magnet to make pickups. A magnetic field is produced near your guitar strings by wrapping the wire around the magnet. When the magnetic field is disturbed, a signal is sent from the pickup to your amplifier.

For this reason, electric guitars do not require large bodies, unlike acoustic guitars. However, this does not imply that the design and types of wood used in electric guitars are unimportant or play no part. The size, weight, and type of wood used to connect the guitar’s neck to the body affect how the strings vibrate.

But it is undeniable that the sound of the guitar is greatly influenced by factors like pickups, an amplifier, and all the electric parts of the guitar. With a much more extensive selection of tones and effects, a player has much more control over the sound.

Guitar Sound on an Acoustic

An acoustic guitar’s design amplifies the sound when the strings are picked, not the player. The sound can be produced without an amplifier. Because of this, acoustic guitars have broad, hollow bodies. In terms of tone and amplification, the sound chamber is crucial. This also demonstrates that the volume and tone of an acoustic guitar are influenced by the size and shape of the body.

The type of wood used to build an acoustic guitar also impacts the instrument’s sound. These woods are referred to as tonewoods in the context of guitars. The guitar’s fingerboard, neck, and bridge are made of the most significant tonewoods, along with the top, back, and sides.

When you strum the guitar strings, these elements combine to produce the sound.

2. Electric Guitar Vs Acoustic Guitar: Which is simple to learn?

Because of their smaller bodies, thinner necks, and lighter gauge strings, electric guitars are simple to play. The pickups and an amplifier handle the entire process of projecting the sound. Therefore, playing the electric guitar is much simpler using a lighter touch and strings.

Source: Canva

The wood top must vibrate to project the sound from an acoustic guitar. Therefore, it necessitates thicker gauge strings and slightly firmer picking and fingering. An acoustic guitar’s body is more extensive than an electric guitar. Additionally, the neck is wider to support the tension created by the heavier strings.

3. Tips for playing Electric Guitar

If you’re just getting started, you should try to learn the following skills:

• Brush Stroke: Use your pick hand as an alternative to a pick to strum your electric guitar string. Brush Stroke is the name of this method. A softer and more subdued effect is produced by strumming the strings with something delicate, like your pick hand.
• Hybrid Picking: This method combines using the pick and the remaining pick hand fingers, as the name implies. Compared to using a choice, it is more flexible. You can play things that would be otherwise impossible to play if you use this technique.
• Sweep picking: Using sweep picking, you can play a single note or a group of letters more easily. When using sweep picking, each message should be fretted and rung out.
• Economy Picking: Playing a single note is simplified by combining economy picking and sweep picking. It is a type of alternate picking that requires you to move the pick from one string to the next as you approach an adjacent string.

4. FAQs 

Is it preferable to master the acoustic guitar before the electric?

Start with an acoustic guitar because it is more challenging to play and will help you develop stronger hands and fingers more quickly. Electric guitars are simpler to play, so you should start there.

What kind of guitar ought a beginner purchase?

However, an electric guitar might be the best beginner guitar for learning because it is typically a little simpler to play due to the neck’s narrower width and the ease of pressing down on the strings.

If I play acoustic guitar, can I play electric?

Acoustic and electric guitars can both be played. You can play the same songs using the same chords and fingerpicking patterns. It will sound and feel completely different on an electric guitar, but you can still play it similarly to an acoustic.

Why is acoustic music preferable to electric?

The acoustic guitar has a much lower start-up cost because you don’t need an amp or other electric equipment. Even on a tight budget, purchasing a high-quality instrument is simple. Check out my top picks for affordable beginner acoustic guitars if you hope to do that.

Conclusion

As stated earlier in the article, it would be much simpler to play a guitar style that you are interested in. If you want to learn something just because it would be simple, you won’t advance very far. It would help if you had a “want” for something to move forward. So, if you’re motivated to learn guitar and inspired to do so, you have a choice. Is electric guitar easier than acoustic? Which guitar would be the easiest for you to play? Only you can answer that.