When we think of solos on the guitar, it’s usually players like Slash or Steve Vai that spring to mind, playing with screaming distortion while bending and tapping their way through the solo.
But an often underrated area of the guitar is the acoustic guitar solo, the very nature of an acoustic guitar with its higher action and increased difficulty when performing bends means it pulls the player away from speed and into thinking more about note choice.
We wanted to showcase how good acoustic guitar solos can be and have gathered up 50 of our favorites which you can learn yourself with the provided tablature and video lesson.
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Kurt Cobain isn’t who you’d immediately think of when it comes to acoustic guitar solos. But in fact, the acoustic solo in About A Girl is one of the best. Putting a huge emphasis on just serving the song with careful note choice, it’s going in right at the top of the list as one of the greats. This is the third single from their first album Bleach, but there’s also a famous acoustic version that was released as part of MTV unplugged.
The solo to this is very easy to play, using mostly single-note lines that climb up the neck which is topped off with a nice little harmonizing note above it. It can be played almost exclusively with down picking making it ideal if you’re new to acoustic guitar solos.
Next, we’re going back to the 60s with the popular Beatles album ‘a Hard Day’s Night’. Written between Paul McCartney and John Lennon, it’s a great love ballad that features the acoustic guitar prominently. And as you might expect from The Beatles, it ranked highly in both the US and UK charts. It’s also been covered by a number of notable artists including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.
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The solo section of this song passes through the classic 4 chord progression of Gm, Dm, Bb, and C7 primarily outlining them using single notes. The ascending passage is also topped off with a nice slide which is then sustained giving a really moody vibe to the section. It’s very slow and shouldn’t pose any technical challenge, in fact, you can down pick the entire thing should you wish.
While I’m sure many know Gwen Stefani for her thriving career as a solo pop artist. But for those present during the 90s, No Doubt were one of the biggest alternative rock bands around. Although Don’t Speak didn’t chart on the US Billboard, it did receive a lot of acclaim from fans. It’s even been used in popular music video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Although much of the song uses a combination of electric and acoustic guitar, for the solo we’re focussing on the acoustic guitar exclusively. There is a tiny bit of flamenco influence here where you’ll be using a technique called sweeping to play an ascending arpeggio with some speed, along with some quick hammer on and pull off inflections which add a lot of spice to the solo.
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A wonderful song that details the exchange between a father and son, with the son wanting to move on and pursue his own path in life while the father struggles to understand or comprehend his son’s desires. It’s a deeply contemplative song and with somewhat of a laid back, folk-rock kind of feel. Interestingly he will adjust the timbre of his voice to depict whether the father or son is speaking.
At 70bpm it’s an extremely slow song that fits its contemplative nature. So this makes our job as guitarists very easy as everything is so slow to play you get a lot of time to prepare for each note of the solo. The main thing here is to try to match the dynamics (or strength) of each hit to match that of the original song.
While this is technically played using an electric guitar on a clean tone, its fingerpicked style combined with the fact 9/10 times you see this song played it’s on an acoustic pretty much makes it an acoustic song. Although originally written by Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley’s rendition is a favorite among fans and did very well commercially selling over 1 million copies in the 3 years following its release.
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The majority of the song uses a fairly involved fingerpicking style, the solo is actually one of the easier parts. Just using some small descending 3 note per string arpeggios that are left to ring out. The song is essentially played like it’s on a steel string so you can play it exactly as he plays it in the original.
It’s great that we can include a heavy metal band on a list of acoustic guitar solos. This was the eighth track from their album ‘Lovedrive’ released in 1979 and is one of their most popular songs that routinely makes its way into their live performances. There is also a dedicated ‘only acoustic’ version released as part of the 2001 album titled ‘acoustica’.
This whole song uses a lot of arpeggios, where you’ll be descending by 3 notes on the top strings while the lower bass note moves around a bit. The measures don’t always add up to 4/4 too so it’s also going to test your rhythmic brain a little too (in a good way).
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While we commonly associate Dream Theater with ripping guitar solos and heavy, distorted tones and possibly the greatest beard in music. The progressive titans are not against slowing things down with a softer ballad that even has a tasteful acoustic solo to boot. It’s a refreshing change and one that Dream Theater fans have grown to love so much the band will often include it in their live performances.
While the song contains a good mixture of electric and acoustic parts, it’s very possible to play the entire thing on just the acoustic guitar if you don’t want to swap anything mid-way through. The whole song, solo included is all in standard tuning and at a nice and slow 77bpm, so it’s something anyone can try their hand at learning.
Another song from the British pop/folk/rock legends The Beatles, this is an upbeat and cheerful love song about the rush of excitement you get when you experience a ‘love at first sight’ moment. It uses an eclectic style and is very hard to pinpoint down to a specific genre, so it’s easier to just describe the style as ‘The Beatles’. It’s taken from their 1965 album ‘I’ve Just Seen a Face’.
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The song uses some fairly fast ‘outside picking’ during the intro before proceeding into what’s clearly a country inspired strumming pattern. The whole song is in standard tuning and is a great one to learn if you need to work on your right hand’s rhythm skill a little more.
Next up is a classic, slow, soft rock song from the ’70s. This is a single from their extremely popular album China X, it hit the number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and was able to stay there for two weeks. It also won a Grammy award for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals. Needless to say, it’s one of their best and has a great solo-acoustic section in the middle.
The solo or ‘lead’ acoustic guitar part of this song tends to happen in short bursts as opposed to being a constant solo, this can make it hard for a beginner to get the timing right. Try to pay close attention to the drums to really see when those parts come in.
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A truly epic song by Queen, with so many unique and different sounding sections, it’s one of their most progressive songs. It’s the first single from their album of the same name which immediately shot to the number 1 spot on the UK singles chart. There’s also a quite famous flamenco-inspired guitar solo which was performed by Yes guitarist Steve Howe.
Obviously, this solo requires a reasonable amount of technique to be able to execute but is something that with a little practice even a beginner should be able to master. The main challenge with this will come from the fairly speedy ascending scalar run which is played using alternate picking exclusively.
Another one of the all time greats from the ’70s. Songwriter Stevie Nicks has said that he wrote the song while struggling with indecision about whether he should go back to school or continue along his musical journey with Lindsey Buckingham. Fortunately, he chose the former and we are lucky enough to be able to enjoy these songs today.
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The first thing to mention about the song is you will need a capo on the third fret of the guitar, unfortunately unlike more ‘chordy’ songs, because of its finger picking nature, there is no way around this. The solo will present a nice challenge too as you will also be maintaining the bassline with your thumb, while your fingers play the melody.
While the original features heaps of distorted electric guitar goodness, today we’re taking a look at the ‘unplugged’ version which came out almost 20 years later.
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