RECORDING Field Notes – Outsider Guitar: 10 Creative, Nontraditional Guitar Ideas

Despite being a multi-instrumentalist, I have always struggled with guitar. As a keyboard player, I can usually play what I hear in my head, but at one point in my musical life I found myself falling into predictable and overly comfortable patterns. So I decided to deeply explore what I consider to be the other primary instrument used for songwriting: guitar.

The problem is, I am not a guitar player.

Living and working in Nashville meant I was in “Guitar Town,” where there are guitar players—and there are folks who play guitar. At my best, I am the latter rather than the former. That has never stopped me from picking up the instrument, and I encourage others to explore creative, nontraditional, even “outsider” approaches to using it.

While I still do not consider myself a true guitar player, I genuinely enjoy playing guitar—or at the very least, playing at guitar.

Some of this may be familiar, but hopefully there are a few new ideas as well. Many of these approaches work just as well on acoustic guitar, even though I am focusing on electrics.

Let’s jump in—here are ten alternate ways to play guitar, in no particular order.