The easy guitar riffs in this lesson will give any beginner a good starting point to rocking out to some popular songs. Some of these riffs are easy enough for absolute beginners to play, while other riffs may take a bit longer to master.
I’ve included Guitar TAB for each riff and explained what to focus on when learning these riffs. Once you learn these riffs, you will have a good idea of which songs to continue learning and which you may need to leave for later on.
If you listen to the songs in this lesson, you’ll hear some very different guitar tones. Some songs use a clean tone, some use effects, and others use different drive tones.
Seven Nation Army
If you’re wondering what you need to do to get your guitar amp to sound like the song, I highly recommend reading my Ultimate Guide to Guitar Amp Settings. It’s one of the most important guides I’ve ever written and will explain how to think about your guitar amp properly.
After you learn these guitar riffs, check out these 7 Seriously Easy Guitar Solos. Learning some easy guitar solos is easier than you might think.
This simple song is played on an electric guitar with a clean tone. A chorus pedal is used in the song, but you don’t need to use one. If you like the sound of the effect in the song, check out my Guide to Chorus Pedals here to learn more.
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Tuning: the guitar in this song is tuned a whole-step down, but you can still play it in standard tuning and it will sound fine. If you want to play along with the song with the proper tuning, tune your strings down to D G C F A D.
Those thick lines at the start of the second bar and the end of the third bar mean to repeat those sections over and over. That means when you get to the end of the last bar, repeat the second and third bar.
Use your first finger (index) to play the first fret notes and your second finger (middle) to play the second fret notes. Practice this riff slowly until you can play it with ease without any mistakes. Gradually increase the tempo (speed) but make sure it never sounds like you’re rushing.
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A good way to tell how well you know how to play a riff like this is to try and play it with your eyes closed. Learn to feel where to place your fingers and where to pick each string. If you can easily play this riff with your eyes closed and you don’t make any mistakes, you can move on to more complex riffs.
You can use alternate picking for this riff, or play everything using down picking. Alternate picking is when you pick down, up, down, up, down, up. I highly recommend you practice this riff using both alternate picking and all-down-picking so you can feel comfortable with both picking methods.
If you like the guitar tone in this song, find out more about the effects used by Kurt Cobain in this guide.
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This riff is so simple that anybody can learn it in a short time. It’s also a great way to learn and practice power chords.
The first version shown below is meant for absolute beginners trying to learn their first riffs. Use your first and third fingers and practice moving back and forth between the two positions.
The second version uses two-string power chords. This time you need to practice sliding your hand back and forth between the two positions.
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The riff is fairly fast, so practice moving back and forth slowly until it feels easy, then you can speed up the position changes. Aim for accuracy instead of speed. You don’t want it to sound sloppy or rushed.
The third version is the actual way the riff is played. These are still power chords, but this time they’re played across three strings. Use your first finger (index) on the sixth string, your third finger (ring) on the fifth string, and your fourth finger (pinky) on the fourth string to play these power chord shapes.
If this version is too hard for you now, keep practicing the second version. It will sound essentially the same as the real version. But I recommend you keep practicing until you can play all three versions. This will make it easier when you see three-string power chords in other songs.
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Important note: if you look up the Guitar TAB for this song on any free Guitar TAB site, you’ll see two possible versions. The first version matches the above Guitar TAB. The other version will be one fret higher, playing the riff on the second and fourth frets. The reason you’ll see two versions is that the actual recording isn’t quite in tune.
The song was most likely slightly sped up in the studio, which slightly raised the pitch (they used tape to record back then). This means the guitar sounds slightly higher than the version shown above. So don’t stress if it sounds weird if you try to play along with the song, it’s not your fault.
One of the simplest riffs you can learn was a massive hit in the early 2000s. Any beginner can learn to play this easy guitar riff and you can play it on acoustic or electric and both will sound fine.
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The guitar in this song is tuned to Open A tuning, but you can play this riff in standard tuning and it will sound exactly the same as the song. Find out about Open A tuning in this guide on alternate tunings.
Later on if you want to learn the entire song, I recommend learning how to play with a guitar slide. A slide is used in this song and plays a big part in making the song sound great.
You have a few different ways you can play a riff like this. Which fingers you choose to use can completely change how a riff feels to play.
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All with one finger: the way most beginners will first try to play this riff is to play every note with your first finger. Simply start with your index finger on the seventh fret, then move it back and forth to play all of the notes.
While it might feel easy to play this riff using one finger, it starts to feel awkward when you try to play the riff at full speed. You’ll notice that you need to jump around the fretboard fast and it can be difficult to play at full speed.
While there’s nothing wrong with learning how to play this riff using only one finger, I suggest you try the other method below so you can learn how to think about finger placement for this riff and for other riffs.
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Play the tenth fret with your pinky: the idea here is that you play all of the notes with your first finger, but play the tenth fret with your fourth finger (pinky).
The reason this method will feel more comfortable than playing everything with your first finger is that the jump from the 7th fret to the 10th fret is quite wide. So instead of sliding your index finger back and forth between those two frets, it makes more sense to use a different finger to play the 10th fret.
Play the 7th fret and the 10th fret back and forth over and over again using your first and fourth fingers and once you feel comfortable using your pinky, you’ll understand why it’s a better way to play this riff.
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After you can comfortably play the riff using the two above methods, have a think about which other notes you might want to change to using a different finger. For example, which fingers should you use to play the last two notes? Should you keep playing both of them with your first finger, or does something else make more sense?
A Whammy pedal was used to lower the pitch of the guitar down an octave. This simply means a pedal was used to make the guitar sound like a bass.
The above pedal is what was used in this song and there are a lot of interesting ways you can use a whammy pedal.
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A whammy pedal can be ridiculously fun to use, so if you like the idea of turning your guitar into a bass or you like the other songs in the above guide, you might want to check out a whammy pedal like the DigiTech Whammy DT.
You can still play this riff without a whammy pedal, only it won’t sound quite like the song. But it’s still a good riff to learn to get you used to moving around the fretboard.
While this riff is easy to play, a lot of people play it wrong. There are a lot of memes about this riff because it is so iconic and so many people play it wrong.
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To play this riff, flatten your first and third fingers over the third and fifth frets. This makes it easier to move between the fret positions without any sliding
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