Welcome back! Today I wanna some great rhythm patterns that will expand your knowledge
and make your guitar skills better! Everyone wants to learn guitar for free and get quality
material and that’s what I will show you here.
Some of the most iconic ballads of all time were written in a very specific time signature: 6/8. This meter has actually become a symbol of classic ballads. Wanna compose a heart touching song that will make your audience tear during the full length of your show? Use a 6/8 meter and a slower tempo. Now there are many ways of playing a 6/8 and the one I wanna show you works particularly good with a slightly crunchy tone.
This rhythm I will teach you, almost feels like a 3/8 , but the drummer is gonna be the one who makes the call; his rhythms will make it 6/8 or 3/8 . Anyway the progression I will be using is as follows: Am, Am/G, D/F#, Dm/F, Esus4, E. It goes like this:
It is also a great progression to just record it and solo over it. If you wanna jam to it you should
use the A Minor Pentatonic. It’s a very easy scale and it works with the progression above.
Another way of playing a ballad is with a regular 4/4. The way I’m about to show you works
particularly well with very distorted guitars and a rock feel. Let’s check it out:
Something very unique about this progression is that some chords are anticipated. If you play
this anticipated chords over a regular steady rock beat, it’s gonna sound really cool; give it a try.
Another thing about this rhythm is that you can either play it using alternate picking or by just playing all downstrokes. If you play all the notes with a downstroke, then the rhythm will likely be more aggressive. If you use an alternate picking technique, mixing upstrokes and downstrokes,then it will become a more mellow rhythm which is not a bad thing at all. I would suggest you to first learn the chords very well and then start practicing both of these
rhythms.
This is all and I really hope you’ve enjoyed it! Please remember to check out our entire database of videos at:
