Acoustic or Electric?

[Heyjoe87]

hello everyone. Recently i've been playing just my steel stringed acoustic (for about a month now) and was wondering if i should go practice on my electric. I say this because I find it easier now to do exercises and scales with my electric. Another thing i want to ask is if i use my electric more will I keep my finger strength for my steel string? I'm guessing my fingers will get use to playing on my electric and will take awhile to adapt to my steel string acoustic.........or will it....

[Zatz]

Why not play both of them? They can't be called different instrements for sure but there are some peculiarities to acoustic and electric. Even if you're going to focus on soloing on your electric I think that it's a good exercise to strum on your acoustic from time to time - you'll be able to lay down rhythm for your solos, borrow nice ideas from acoustic playing (more dissonance, open strings, finger style etc). Though these instruments are to a certain extent interchangeable, you may find some exercises very difficult to nail down on acoustic if they were intended for electric, and maybe vice versa.

[gersdal]

I agree with Zatz, but would like to add that I think you would benefit from playing various guitars (eletric and accoustic). Your technique should not be dependent on playing on your favourite guitar. In fact you should also consider mastering the differences between a nylon stringed guitar, steel stringed accoustic guitar, el guitar with clean sound, el guitar with distorted sound, and close to feedback playing (and more I guess). They all comes out quite different, and your technique has to adapt slightly to the specific case.

[Madaxeman]

For me, when I had an acoustic (soon to be remedied!) I used to pick it up and noodle whenever, because there it was with no FX or amp to worry about.
I found it was much easier playing the electric after the larger string gauge, wider neck, and other peculiarities of the acoustic.
I always felt it was much easier to come up with a basic song on the acoustic, as opposed to the electric. Don't know why really. Maybe it was because I was always playing it while watching TV or killing some time. Some people say the piano is the same in that writing songs on it is easier for them.

[Heyjoe87]

Thank you all for you comments i'll take all of them in consideration. Oh Another reason why i used my acoustic more was because i wanted to develop more cleanliness to my chops.

[Pekkaman]

huh?

I play on my electic with alot of distortion when I want to develope cleanness, the disortion doesn't allow any wrong notes to ring for to long, but maybe you're talking about a different kind of cleanness?

[Heyjoe87]

I kinda get what you mean. I do the same, but do finger flapping (Incredible lightness technique) w/ distortion on.