Dear [[{First name}]],

Welcome to the June Musicademy Newsletter!

In this edition:

Ask The Expert

A new series asking our resident Musicademy experts their advice. This month, guitarist Andy Chamberlain offers his thoughts on purchasing a good acoustic guitar.


I want to buy my first decent acoustic guitar. What would you recommend?


These days with Far East production methods getting better and better, you can buy a quality instrument far more cheaply than ever before. However, two rules of thumb still apply – 1) You get what you pay for and 2) Buy the best quality instrument you can afford as it will pay off in the long run.
When searching for an acoustic guitar, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What am I going to use it for? For instance playing in church or just at home?
  • Am I going to be strumming, finger picking or both?
  • Do I need a loud unplugged sound or not?

When choosing a steel string acoustic guitar, the price differentiation often pays for the woods used and the construction method. Cheaper instruments often use laminated woods (small veneers of woods glued together) whereas more expensive ones tend to use solid woods (a single piece). If you can afford to, go for a solid wood instrument as the sound will be much better.


Sometimes intermediate priced guitars have a solid wood top (where the sound hole is) and laminated back and sides.


Good cheap instruments these days can start as low as £150. If you are using something regularly at church it is best to spend at least £400 and if you are looking for a serious guitar that you can cherish you can get a fabulous instrument for about £800 upwards.


If you are playing live you will need to budget for a pick-up system rather than trying to mic the guitar. The two best known types of systems are the under saddle (or under bridge) ‘piezo’ system or the sound hole pickup. There are loads of Piezo systems out there that produce really good sounds but need a battery operated pre-amp to get the best results. If you are buying a guitar with a pick-up system its probably got this lot included already. The sound hole systems have come a long way in the last 15 years. I use the most basic of the Fishman Rare Earth sound hole pickups in my own guitar and I love it.


If you are shopping at the cheaper end beware of very cheap guitars including pick-ups as the money will have gone into the pick-up system rather than the construction of the guitar. Also beware of cheaper acoustic guitars painted in your favourite colour as the paint can often hide low grade wood construction. In fact its often said that the less finish you have on a guitar, the more the tone of the natural wood shines through.


Woods – Assuming that you are going to buy a sold wood guitar, the type of woods in the top, back and sides can vastly affect the tone the instrument produces and certain woods are more suitable for certain playing styles. If you are a flat picking guitarist (strumming) then perhaps start with an instrument that has a spruce top and rosewood back and sides. Spruce is very light yellow in colour and rosewood is brown with dark veins running through the length of the wood. Spruce tends to give a brighter sound and rosewood adds depths and volume. Classic examples of this are the Martin and Gibson ‘Dreadnought’ designs. If you want a brighter sound still try a maple bodied guitar. This wood works particularly well in the large jumbo style acoustic such as a Gibson J200 or one of the Guild models. These tend to work well if you want to project a large even sound but is not so great for finger picking. 


Many fingerpickers prefer a cedar top, which has a reddish colour and adds much more ‘middle’ to the sound. Mahogany back and sides works well for this too. This is sometimes said to produce a more ‘folky’ or European sound. If you are into this style try a Lowden or Avalon.
Many guitar models mix and match some of these wood combinations to great effect so its really worth trying as many different models as you can before you buy. You will also find that tone can vary even for identical models so its worth going to a guitar shop with lots of choice to pick the one you want.


There are loads of other wood combinations too such as ebony, koa and ovangkol that all give different sounds. My general advice though is to spend the money on the quality of woods rather than the prettiness or decoration of the instrument.

Rock & Pop Guitar Lessons Online Now

As you probably know, Musicademy started life as a music college. As much of the teaching we do locally is teaching rock & pop songs rather than worship music, we thought it would be good to bring those lessons to a wider audience. We’ve therefore filmed about 80 guitar lessons teaching some classic rock and pop songs. The teaching is in our “Song Learner” style with Andy Chamberlain breaking down the song into easy to follow steps. Stage 1 is for complete beginners, stage 2 for people who have been playing a few months and so on. Stage 3 is about the level where our worship Song Learners start.


The Rock & Pop downloadable lessons feature songs from U2, The Police, Coldplay, Nirvana, The Beatles, Van Morrison, Oasis and more. There are also lessons showing how to play the 12 bar blues and numerous guitar solos. The first five stages are available now as online downloads from our webstore. See our website for a list of the lessons. These lessons are not available on DVD.


There is plenty of useful learning in this material that you can bring to the worship environment, and it’s also great fun to have some classic rock & pop songs in your repertoire.


Special offer – download 6 lessons for the price of 5 – quote coupon code 6for5 at the checkout. You can choose a mixture of rock & pop or worship downloads.

FREE online lesson

Download any of our rock & pop or worship guitar lessons free of charge. Just select the lesson at our online store, click to checkout and put the code SAMPLE DOWNLOAD in the coupon box.


Login for free resources

We have a members-only area of our website that is totally free to join – you just have to login to access a wide range of free resources. There are articles on worship, music theory, vocals, guitar and keyboard playing as well as loads of chord charts and other handouts that complement our worship DVDs.

Most of our DVDs feature on-screen graphics showing the chords needed but so that you can practise without the DVD, or take the chord charts into a band situation, we’ve also made them available online. For legal reasons we can’t additionally copy out the lyrics but you can find these easily by doing a Google search.

Login to the members area of our website to find out more

New Vocal Eze Throat Spray

We’ve just taken delivery of a herbal throat spray used by professional singers such as Sting, Rachael Warwick, Tim McGraw, and Joss Stone, who reports "Vocal Eze smoothes out my voice. I always keep it close when I perform".


Vocal Eze is recommended for singers, preachers, teachers and anyone else who use thier voice regularly in their day to day work. It is the only artist-endorsed throat spray on the market and addresses tickles, soreness, dryness and irritation of the throat.


The soothing herbal spray offers relief and lubrication for sore or overused throats. Vocal Eze contains echinacea, liqourice root and ginger and has a great tasting, minty flavour. The unique combination of herbs are held in a lubricating glycerin and aloe base, rather than in the drying alcohol base common to most throat spray products.

Competition result

Kirk Grover from Oregon City won the free five downloads in our April competition. See below for his detailed reviews of each lesson.

Rev Dave Eadie from Torrington Baptist Church in the UK won the May competition. We’ll let you know what he thought next month.

Thanks to all those who entered – we’ll be incorporating many of the suggestions and recommendations in the newsletter and on our blog in the near future.

Competition Winner Kirk Grover’s Review of the Musciademy Worship Guitar Song Learner Downloads


Overall I've found these videos extremely helpful and enjoyable!  I'm looking forward to diversifying my playing style in leading worship with what I've learned.  It's refreshing to learn new techniques, and a joy to worship God through playing my instrument well to His glory.  For anyone who is wondering, each video can stand alone and doesn't require previous experience with other videos or DVD courses... Andy tells you how to play each chord, strumming pattern, etc. in detail and doesn't presume that you already know how to play an G Augmented or Dadd9, for example.  However, it is beneficial to see some of the Worship Guitar DVD series or other Song Learner videos, too, as many of the skills you learn are reapplied in other lessons. Through seeing particular skills reused, you'll begin to realize how you could use them in other songs you already know and you'll become more comfortable integrating them into your everyday guitar playing. The free online resources are the perfect compliment to the video lessons as well - so if you need a printed reference for what you just learned, it's already prepared for you.  I'd highly recommend these Song Learner videos and the Worship Guitar DVD courses (I own the intermediate box set) for anyone who wants to learn how to play guitar well and comfortably in a worship setting.

Let My Words Be Few – Andy Chamberlain does a wonderful job of teaching this song – and as he states in the beginning of this video, it would be great for beginners or those who've been playing guitar for a while!   As in the other videos, he does such a wonderful job of teaching new strumming patterns here, breaking the patterns down and teaching them in a way that you can strum along as he's talking in order to get it down just right. The chords he also teaches are beautiful, explaining what a drone note is (I use them all the time, but now I know what it's called and what its purpose is), and gives a quick but understandable lesson as to what an augmented chord is and why we would use them.

How Deep the Father's Love For Us – I've never really had picking down. This video is helping immensely as it shows some really neat techniques and patterns to use in picking.  Again, Andy walks through each section and doesn't blow over any details – everything here is easy to understand and well demonstrated.   This video also does a wonderful job of showing how the song is broken up between 6/4 and 4/4 timing, and how to alternate between the two seamlessly.

The Father's Song – Probably the video that packs in the most value into one lesson! Goes over some great finger picking, an awesome walkdown that would be difficult to master without Andy's tips, and a bunch of great sounding and unique chords. Plus, Andy shows some different ways to finger common chords that work well during the quick chord changes and make the stretches on the walkdown easier.

Holy Is the Lord - Though I've played this song a million times (or what seems like it!), I've always wanted to find a way to play it a little differently and add some more dynamics to it.  This video was great for doing just that!  The tips on playing the guitar to give it a percussive sound like a bass and snare were very helpful, and the demonstration of the walkdowns was a lot of fun. I've found myself using these tips in other songs as well in leading worship at our church.  

In Christ Alone - What a great song!  I've always loved this song, but have been cautious to lead it as playing a hymn-like song on guitar can be tricky.  However, this video showed some really simple chord changes that can be used in this song and also sound great.  I find myself playing a lot of the really basic sounding chords most of the time, so having this video has expanded my chord dictionary in the key of D, and I'm able to incorporate these chords in other songs now to add more color and texture to the music.

Win Five Free Song Learner Downloads


We really like to know what you think of our newsletter and the Musicademy products so please take a couple of minutes to answer these questions and e-mail them to us. One respondent will win five free song learner downloads and we’ll let you know what they think of them in the next issue.

  1. What did you think of this newsletter?
  2. Which articles did you particularly enjoy?
  3. Any questions for our “Ask the Expert” feature?
  4. Any suggestions for content that you would like to read in the future?
  5. Any suggestions for websites we could recommend people?
  6. Have you bought a Musicademy product or downloaded a lesson and what did you think of it?

Please email your responses to enter the draw!

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