Welcome back! In this article I wanna help you learn rock guitar.
Rock is such a wide concept; let’s start by saying that it’s not a genre, it’s a movement. It has influenced society so much. When I think about rock I think about distortion. Let’s just stop for a moment and agree that there’s no rock without a distorted guitar.
If I had to think about one chord that describes rock and roll, that would be the Power Chord. Power Chords are easy to play and easy to remember. They also sound extremely good with distortion. A power chord is nothing but a root, its fifth and an octave.
Let’s check out a progression in which you will only play power chords:
Fairly simple. Turn up the distortion knob in your and you are good to go. Now let’s make this a bit more interesting; let’s add some rhythm. :
Pretty awesome, right? Some people prefer to use alternate picking with this type of rhythm, but I have to say that if you play all downstrokes it’s gonna sound so much more powerful. I know this sounds right; I’m always telling you to move your wrist and let it flow to the point where it feels natural, but trust me on this one; this type of rock rhythms sound way better when played with nothing but downstrokes.
So what if we shorten this progression and mix it up a little? We end up with something like this:
Just by moving everything a lit bit and shortening it, it just becomes more alive. This is the perfect progression to use Palm Mute. Let’s give it a try:
And since you were playing all downstrokes, now adding the palm mute technique feels so easy. It’s almost like if it was supposed to be there. Palm Mute is a widely used technique in rock music. I just wrote an example, but I mean you can experiment with it and use it whenever and wherever you want.
That is all for this article. I hope you enjoyed it and please remember to check out our entire database of lessons at GuitarControl.com
