Challenge yourself with two iconic Fleetwood Mac riffs from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with this killer lesson and take your guitar to a new level tonight!
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you two cool riffs from Fleetwood Mac. The guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, in my opinion is one of the most underrated guitar players around and you never really ever hear him mentioned when you hear people talking about the greats and I think that he’s a really great player that comes up with really neat stuff that’s just different and a totally different kind of playing style than a lot of the other guitar players that I’m into. 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 this.
Fleetwood Mac Riff-1 Rhiannon
All right so the first one we’re going to look at is the uh the riff from Rhiannon. So with this I’m playing with a clean tone and I’m playing this just with my fingers. So we’re going to start off, it’s all like basically made up of these little dyads or double stops. So the first one here I’ve got my first finger on the first fret of the B string and my second finger on the second fret of the G string. So I’m using my first finger to pick the G string and my second finger to pick the B string and then my thumb to pick the open A string. So for this first part of it we start off we’re gonna play the A, G and B strings at the same time and that’s the downbeat of one and then for the and of one we’re going to take this shape we’re doing here with our first and second finger we’re going to move it up a whole step so now our first finger is on the third fret of the B string and our second finger is on the fourth fret of the G string and we pluck that for the and of one; so it’s like one and and then on for the downbeat of two we hit the open A string and for the and of two plus the downbeat of three we’re going to move our second finger up from the fourth fret to the fifth fret and then just lay it down so we’re getting the fifth fret of the G and the B string…. So we when we pluck this it’s on the and of two, but it’s a quarter note, so it’s the and of two plus the downbeat of three so it rings out twice as long as the other the previous ones and then on the and of three we’re going to hit the open A string and on the downbeat of four we’re going to move this shape back down so now our second finger is on the fourth fret of the G string and our first finger is on the third fret of the B string and that’s four and then on the and of four we hit the open A string again and that’s the first measure… Now then on the second measure we’re going to come back down and to this very first dyad shape again; so first finger first fret of the B string, second finger second fret of the G string and then so that’s the downbeat of one and then on the and of one we’re just gonna hit the B and the G strings open and then for the downbeat of two we hit the open A string again. So one and two and then on the and of two we’re gonna move to our middle finger here so it’s gonna barre the second fret of the of the D and the G string and we play this on the and of two, but it’s a quarter note, so it’s like and three and then on the and of three we hit the open A string. And then on the downbeat of four we hit this barring the second fret of the D and G string again and then on the and of four the open low E string and that’s the first two measures and half of the riff. Okay then starting on the third measure we’re going to put our first finger onto the first fret of the low E string our second finger onto the second fret of the G string and our third finger onto the third fret of the D string. Now this is might feel a little awkward and you might think that maybe better if I use my other fingers, but you’re going to need that pinky for what we’re going to do here in a second. So we’re going to play all these together and I’m my thumb to playing the low E string and my first finger is playing the D string and my second finger is playing the G string and then we’re going to take our pinky and we’re going to put it onto the fourth fret of the G string and then hit the low E string again and then we’re going to reach our pinky up to the fifth fret, this is a big stretch here, and then back to the low E string and pick that again. And then we’re gonna bring our pinky back to the fourth fret of the G string… and we pick that on four and, and then on the last measure we take our pinky off we play the low E string and we pluck the D and G string again and our we should still be with our second finger on the second fret of the G string and our third finger onto the third fret of the D string… and we hit that one and two and three and four and, and then the whole thing would just repeat…
Fleetwood Mac Riff-2 Landslide
All right and then next we have Landslide and for this to be in the same key that they’re in you’ll need to put a capo on the third fret and if you don’t have a capo you can still practice this, but just you won’t be in the same key. So we just have this C major chord and we’re playing this just with our fingers too and this is a Travis Picking style thing. So my thumb is going to play the A string and then my first finger is going to play the G string and then my thumb is going to move up and play the D string and then my first fingers can move up and play the B string… Now your thumb will be playing these bass notes and then you could use your first finger on the G string and your second finger on the B string, but this is just kind of the way that I’ve always done this technique, just with my thumb and my first finger; honestly don’t use this technique a whole lot for a lot of the things that I do, but for this particular song I used to play it just fingers just with my fingers regular finger style but it just doesn’t quite sound the same as it does when you do the Travis Picking. So A, G, D, B and then back to A, G and D… that’s the pattern… Now these are all 16th notes except that last note is an eighth note; so one e and a, one e and, and that’s like half of the first measure. So then we’re going to switch to another chord G over B (G/B). So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our middle finger and we’re going to move it from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the A string take our third finger off and then put your fourth finger onto the third fret of the B string. Now I’m referring to frets in reference to the capo and then we do the same picking pattern; A, G, D, B, A, G, D… Then we’re gonna switch to an A minor seven (Am7). So we’re just gonna take our pinky off and we’re gonna move our middle finger from the second fret of the A string to the second fret of the D string and so now we’re just going to do that same exact picking pattern that we did in the first measure; A, G, D, B, A, G, D. And switch back to the G/B; A, G, D, B, A, G, D, A and then it just starts over again…
Conclusion
All right so there you have it, two cool riffs from Fleetwood Mac. This is also i guess kind of a lesson on some basic finger style playing as well. 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 and have a great day.
