My favorite way to play "G"

This is a fairly basic lesson
in rhyhtm guitar.

The main principle I wanted to teach
you is that sometimes the coolest
way to play a “G” chord when you’re
riffing is just playing the open
D,G, and B strings.

That’s it – just those 3 strings played open. I mean you’re not even fretting anything – how easy is that?

This particularly works well when you’re playing the A major chord and going to G.

Here we have a simple E, G, A chord progression.

Think of the rhythm as a 4 count.

On beats 1,2, and 3 , you’re playing the E chord.

On beat 4, you’ll play G to A.

So the count is ONE , TWO , THREE, FOUR-AND. Say it aloud.

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR-AND.

That’s what you should play at first.

But then to spice it up, we are going to add what’s called a “pick up” note.

It’s a 16th note just before the start of the next bar.

So instead of playing a quarter note, which would be a full count of ONE,
we will play a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note.

We will do that before the 2nd and 3rd beat.

And then on the 3rd beat, we will just play an eighth note followed by 2 16th notes which will just do as rake chords.

A rake chord is when you’re not fretting anything – you just put your fingers over the strings to mute them and strum to get a percussive sound.
It it symbolized by x symbols instead of numbers on the tab.

Finally, let’s play the whole rhythm figure 3 times in a row, and end it with a lead guitar figure.

We are in the key of E pentatonic, so we will hit the root note of E on the 9th
fret on the G string, and do a little descending run down the pentatonic scale, also throwing in the Bb note,
which is the “blue note” of this scale.

If any of that was confusing, don’t worry, just forget the theory and use your ears and your eyes to follow along.

Listen to the example and play what you see hear.