Learn to play 3 fun and easy riffs from Grand Funk Railroad with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the step by step video instruction and you will be rockin’ these classic riffs tonight.
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I’ve got three cool easy riffs for you from Grand Funk Railroad.
Right now Guitar Control is giving away this cool ebook, 30 easy and powerful open chords, there’s a link down in the description. Click on that download it, very useful.
So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.
Grand Funk Railroad Riff-1 – I’m Your Captain
All right so the first one we’re going to look at is I’m Your Captain. So we’re going to be playing the open D string every other note for a good portion of this riff. So we start off open D string to the seventh fret of the G string and I’m just going to be kind of using one finger for a lot of this and I’ll explain why here in a second. So we’ve got the open to the seven to open to five to open to four to open… Then we’re gonna go open G string and we’re gonna do a hammer-on to the second fret and then we’re gonna go to the fourth fret of the G string with our third finger and we’re gonna pick that hammer to the fifth fret and pull back off and that’s the first half of the riff… Now the second half starts off the same way and then we’re going to go back to the G string open and hammer to two and then five pull the two and then we slide back up to that note because it just starts over again, that’s why we’re using the one finger…
Grand Funk Railroad Riff-2 – We’re An American Band
All right next we’re going to look at is We’re An American Band. So we’ve got a D5; so first finger on the fifth fret of the A string and then I’m just using you can use two fingers or just like that which picking up is the the seventh fret of the D and the G string. So we’re going to hit that and then we’ve gonna just mute the strings and it’s like… so that’s the first measure and second measure is the same as the first measure except now we want to try to pick up this… to make it a full on D major chord and do the same thing; the only difference is that the last two we’re going to just play the seventh fret on the D and the G string and those are like kind of pick up notes to go to the next chord… Then we’re gonna move down and do C5 so it’s the same shape just a whole step lower; so the third fret of the A string, fifth fret of the B and G string and this is one two and three. So it’s one, rest on the downbeat of two and the and of two, all of beat three and then on the downbeat of four we rest and then just the muted strum… Then we’re going to move up a whole step back to D5 and on the and of one we’re going to move up here so first fingers on the eighth fret and third fingers on the 10th, down a half step, two mutes, back down to C5, another mute and then it just repeats…
Grand Funk Railroad Riff-3 – Time Machine
All right and then the final Grand Funk Railroad riff we’re going to be looking at a pretty cool riff from Time Machine. So this one the riff is the same, we’re just going to be moving it around. So we’re starting off with an A5 power chord; so first finger on the fifth fret of the low E string and third finger on the seventh fret of the A string and you can also pick the seventh fret of the D string too if you want. So we hit this one and, and then on the downbeat of two we’re gonna barre our third finger across the seventh fret of the D, G and B string and then we’re gonna do that to the fifth fret with our first finger and we strum that and do a hammer-on with our middle finger to the sixth fret of the G string… strum that again and then back to seven and that’s the riff… So you have two measures of that and then we’re going to move it up so we’re in E; so we’re going to move it all the way up to the 12th fret, but it’s still the exact same thing… so do it twice there. Now we’re going to move it down so we’re starting at the seventh fret; one measure of that, back to the A for one measure and then back to the E. Now this time it’s going to be a little bit different. It starts off the same, but now after we hit there on the 14th fret where we normally would be the end we’re going to go back to 12 with the 13…
Conclusion
All right so there you have it, three fun and not too terribly difficult to play riffs from Grand Funk Railroad. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching 3 Fun & Easy Riffs From Grand Funk Railroad and have a great day.
