Acoustic guitar as a rhythm section.

[Puddleglum]

Originally Posted by Br1ck

The key to rhythm guitar playing is learning to mute really well, with both fretting fingers and picking palm. It's akin to closing a high hat. You get much more percussive when you can do it, particularly palm muting.

I agree. One of the best things an acoustic player should learn ASAP is to do interesting things rhythmically (e.g., palm-muting, slightly muting notes with the fretting hand between chords, etc.) to make the song more interesting. Also: dynamics! Build up the song, don't just do the whole thing with the same dynamics all the way through. This is particularly important if you are the only instrument in the song. So many people miss this and take a song that couldn't been great and mess it up.

The worst for me is when I see someone just sawing away and hacking at the guitar like he's trying to down a tree. I was fortunate pretty early on in my guitar-journey to meet a friend who was/is an excellent rhythm player. I picked up a lot of these little tricks from playing with him.

[Shortfinger]

The deluxe edition of Van Morrison's "Moondance" album has a few outtake tracks of "Into the Mystic," and my favorite is Take 10.

Here it is. As Van says to the others before he begins, "Let's dig the groove a while an' then slide into it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpBxble9bxE&loop=0

I play it at 85 bpm using my new little fun drummer, a Beatbox Mini 2. Pretend your voice is a trombone, and it helps to mimic Van's vocal riffs.

Very very rhythmic guitar work going on here, and it is totally secondary to the lyric.