Here's the thing, I own an Ibanez GRG170Dx and I wanna play acoustic stuff on it too, instead of just rock, metal, those kind of stuff...

I heard that normally, when playing an electric guitar, you just use down strums? I mean, I'm sure down+up strums, chucks, are also applicable when playing the electric guitar right? Especially while playing the acoustic songs?

the downstrokes are for heavy bottom ended riffs usually.. not strumming.

i prefer playing downstrokes for pedal note riffs, because i feel it sounds more consistent and heavy to my ears. many would disagree but i like it my way

james hetfield will agree to your statement

who told you that?
you can play the electric guitar whichever ways you like. strums, picks, play it like piano (like malmsteen), taps, play with your teeth and what not. strumming applies to both acoustic and electric guitars be it up or down. those "down strum only" is referred to as down strokes and usually only used on palm muted riff.

strumming on an electric guitar however is a tad different. you need to strum lighter than on an acoustic, since the action is lower. it won't sound very nice without reverb though.

This post has been edited by zeroglyph: Aug 4 2008, 05:30 PM

Basically experiment with your guitar and play it the way you think sounds best. However If your acoustic songs means classical guitar pieces, then you will need to use finger picking with at least 4 fingers. Other then the the simplest songs, you won't be able to play any classical pieces using a pick simple because you have to pluck a few non adjacent at once.

theres always chicken picking

Nothing wrong with playing clean on an electric my friend. Just add a touch of chorus, reverb and delay (if possible) and you're good to go.

Btw, who told you that you only down strum on electrics? Haha, that's a funny one...

there's no fixed rule on how to play.. play which ever way you feel comfortable, it'll be fine