Rhythm guitar teachers specialize in playing rhythm guitar. A rhythm guitarist specializes in playing rhythm only and helps provide the back bone and groove of a band. A rhythm guitarist is often stereotyped as not being as skilled as a lead guitarist and that is why they play rhythm. While this maybe true in some cases, but not always. A genuine rhythm guitarist is a valuable asset to a band and requires there own set of special skills. If you want to play jazz or funk, often you will play very little, if none at all, lead guitar. Even in rock, metal, blues, and country, the rhythm is the majority of the song and good rhythm skills are a must. When searching for rhythm guitar teachers you should consider the things in the following article.
Rarely will you find a person who is an exclusive rhythm guitar teacher. Rather it will be a teacher who teaches some lead guitar as well. When considering rhythm guitar teachers for the student who wants to specialize in rhythm, you must determine your current skill level and what style or genre you are interested in. You would not want to look into the pool of rhythm guitar teachers who specialize in funk if you are interested in metal, etc… The following are examples of what you may expect in different styles and genres lessons from rhythm guitar teachers.
*Metal: Metal and all of its sub genres have some shared rhythm aspects. You could expect to learn some of the following; palm muting (dampening), left hand (fretting hand) muting, alternate picking, playing and counting in 4/4, ¾, 5/4, 7/8, and other odd meters. Major and minor chords in both open and bar formats, and all of the variations of power chords.
*Jazz: Rhythm guitar teachers who teach jazz should be able to teach the following; Classic Jazz, Hot Jazz, Chicago Jazz, Swing and Bebop. You may learn; major, minor, 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7th chords and 9th chords. Techniques like “comping” and using walking bass lines could also be covered.
*Funk: When wanting to take funk guitar lessons you should look for rhythm guitar teachers who specialize in funk. The chords played in funk are usually very simple and released immediately after strumming to mute the sound, generally the sound of the chords do not ring out in funk. Only partial chords are usually played on the higher strings only which produces the funk sound and often the same chord is played for long durations of a song which is also a signature part of the funk sound. Funk is all about rhythm and locking into the groove with the drummer. You could expect to learn the following in funk lessons; 9th and 13th chords as well as inverting major and minor chords so that the root not is on the first string, another key element of the funk sound.
So as you can see finding rhythm guitar teachers can be tricky task, but worth it when you find the right fit for your playing style and interest.
