Welcome back! Today I wanna give you a very important rhythm guitar lesson.
Rhythm guitar is a very wide concept, and If you are just starting out it can easily confuse you. I
mean there’s an endless amount of possibilities; there are so many ways in which you can play
a chord. To make it easier, we are gonna work with Power Chords. Let’s start off by playing a
very simple rhythm, all downstrokes like this:
You could also play it using alternate picking, with a downstroke followed by an upstroke; very
simple. The result is not gonna be as strong sounding as playing it all down strokes, but again, it
depends on the situation.
In the same situation you could skip all the notes and simply sustain the chords like this:
Usually this of rhythm works better when the drummer is filling out all the empty space with the
cymbals or with more busy rhythms. Sustaining chords is very useful when you are playing a
ballad; it works very well and it usually better placed in the chorus of a song.
You could also skip all that and go for an even simpler version, but funky. You could use 2
chords in the higher strings and mute for the most part. Something like this:
It’s funny because most guitar players would see this rhythm and immediately relate it to Funk,
but this could perfectly fit in a rock situation. Let’s think about Red Hot Chili Peppers or Rage
Against The Machine; these bands would totally rock out a rhythm like this. I can already
imagine Tom Morello back in the 90s slamming his custom guitar with a funky rhythm like the
one above and Zack de la Rocha killing it on top of it. I mean, it works really well.
Oftentimes, we play the open chords in between vocal lines or not on the beat; this way is sticks
out more.
Well, that is all for today! I hope you enjoyed this lesson and please remember to check out our entire collection of videos at:
