How To Play Guitar Rhythm

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Playing awesome rock rhythm guitar riffs is a lot of fun and makes you feel like a badass every time you pick up your guitar.

Best of all, you can play amazing rhythm guitar riffs even if you can’t play guitar fast and don't know a lot of chords yet.

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Rhythm guitar mastery is also about knowing how to be creative with your guitar riffs, so you sound great even when you are playing simple power chords (this is a lot easier than you think… keep reading to learn how to do it).

Rhythm Guitar Riffs Practice Tip #1: Learn To Play Rhythm Guitar Really Tight, So Everything You Play Sounds Incredible… Here Is How:

Record yourself playing 25 quarter notes, strumming a single power chord. Do this with a metronome or a simple quarter note drum beat. If you are playing in perfect time, it will seem like the click has

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(become silent) while you play because your rhythm guitar playing is perfectly “on top” of it. However, if your playing is slightly behind or rushing ahead of the click, this will be a sign that your timing needs work.

Want a quick and easy way to tell how good your timing is? Take this fun rhythm guitar quiz and try to find flaws in each recording you hear. You can do this without your guitar and learn exactly what to focus on to improve your rhythm playing quickly.

The other part of playing tight rhythm guitar is consistent palm muting and articulation. This not only makes your playing sound way better, but also saves you a lot of money and time if you ever record your rhythm guitar playing in a real studio.

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To make your palm muting very tight, find the sweet spot on your guitar where the muting intensity is just right (not too aggressive and not too soft). Keep the pressure and hand position the same as you play your rhythm guitar riffs.

Step 3: Begin to rotate through the measures at random. Instead of playing measure 1, followed by measure 2, followed by measure 3, followed by measure 4, mix them up like this:

This process helps you create dozens of rhythmic ideas that you can use to write killer guitar riffs very quickly and easily.

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After you create a rhythm you really like (see tip #2), add other notes or chords to it to complete your riff. Use any notes or chords you want until you are fully happy with the riff.

Rhythm Guitar Riffs Practice Tip #4: Learn How To Create Endless Variations From Small Guitar Riffs, So You Never Run Out Of Rhythm Guitar Ideas. Here Is How:

Step 1: Make a list of 10 rhythm guitar riffs you already know well. These can be guitar riffs you wrote yourself or riffs from your favorite songs by other bands.

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Step 2: Take the first rhythm guitar riff from step 1 and change its rhythm 10-20 different ways. The changes don’t have to be significant and you can vary any part of the riff freely.

Step 3: After you create 10-20 rhythm variations on the first riff, repeat step 2 with a different guitar riff. (Use completely different chord progressions and notes.)

Rhythm Guitar Riffs Practice Tip #5: Use Pinch Harmonics And Vibrato To Make Your Riffs Grab Your Listeners’ Attention And Make Them Love Your Guitar Playing. Here Is How:

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Studying music theory helps you create awesome rhythm guitar riffs quickly and easily. You can stop relying on trial and error and know exactly what chords (and notes) to play to make your riffs sound the way you want.

Now that you know how to write killer rhythm guitar riffs, your next step to becoming a badass guitarist is to test your ability to play rhythm guitar cleanly and in time. Take this rhythm guitar playing test to learn exactly what to focus on to master rhythm guitar easily and fast.

Want to quickly improve all areas of your guitar playing? Take online guitar lessons with a great guitar teacher and become an amazing guitarist fast.Regardless of whether you perform solo, with a band or just in your basement – you’re going to want to have good rhythm.

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Rhythm drives everything in music. No matter what song you study, there is always a specific tempo and groove in place that moves the song forward.

Sure, counting out loud is easy, but when we try to incorporate counting into our playing it can get hairy pretty quick.

Try to keep the time between each chord as even and consistent as possible. Now, pick up speed and count ‘1-2-3-4’ out loud as you play.

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As you count out loud, you may notice your playing begin to even out a bit. You can add in some toe-tapping to keep the pulse of the rhythm.

If you don’t know what a metronome is, it’s one of the best ways to learn how to play rhythm guitar. This little device ticks at an even pace at a tempo of our choosing, and helps us keep time. You don’t even have to buy one, you can simply click here!

Metronomes are great because they help us learn to keep time in a variety of different ways – We can master different note groupings, tempos, time signatures and musical styles all through the use of a metronome.

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Learning how to play rhythm guitar is nothing more than clapping different rhythms if you don’t have a wide array of chords to practice with.

We recommend that you start by learning your open position major and minor chords, which will help you practice the rhythms in this lesson.

We’ve laid them out some easy chords for you to practice with below, but if you want some more challenging exercises you can click here.

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(If you don't understand the above image please read our article How To Read Guitar Chordboxes In 60 Seconds. It will make everything clear!)

These chord types have been used in all styles of music, but mostly in heavier genres like Rock & Roll as well as Punk music and Metal.

Power chords always take the same shape on the low E and A strings, and this makes them perfectly well-suited to beginner guitarists who want to learn how to play rhythm guitar effectively.

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Pro Tip: Two-string and three-string power chords both have their own applications in music, and you will definitely find room for both types while learning how to play rhythm guitar. Experiment with both and find what you like hearing!

When you’ve finished running through these power chord shapes and feel comfortable, move on to the next section where we discuss how to count time!

Pro Tip: These note values don’t just apply to individual notes – they apply to everything, chords included! Try holding a C major chord and counting ‘1-2-3-4.’ You’ve officially played a chord for the duration of a whole note.

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A useful tip is to slow the metronome down to accommodate a speed that you’re comfortable with. If 80bpm is too fast, drop it down to 70bpm instead!

Even though it may seem like a boring task at first, practicing with a metronome is hands-down the best way to learn how to play rhythm guitar effectively.

Now that we’ve gotten through how to play rhythm guitar using quarter notes, we can learn how to subdivide them the same way we subdivide whole and half notes.

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Eighth notes are counted differently than any note we’ve encountered yet as they introduce a new beat to count on – the ‘&’

Due to the fact that there are two eighth notes to every quarter note, we need a way to count the second eighth note. With that in mind, we can count eighth notes like this:

These & notes are called offbeats, and they help us pick up some energy in learning how to play rhythm guitar. Our 1s, 2s, 3s and 4s can be referred to as on-beats.

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Try This: Grab an E major chord and strum down-up-down-up. Count an on-beat for every downstroke, and and offbeat for every upstroke.

You can fit four of each stroke into one bar of music (8 eighth notes), so practice counting them out loud to keep good time!

Whether you play Heavy Metal or Pop music, mastering a series of effective strumming patterns is an important part of learning how to play rhythm guitar.

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Pro Tip: One of the things we need to learn to avoid is touching unwanted strings within some of the chords we are strumming.

For more info on a good way to approach the fret hand when learning how to play rhythm guitar, why don’t you check out our YouTube segment “Ask Mike”?

We’ve put together a short-list of easy songs for you to practice while you learn more about how to play rhythm guitar.

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If you enjoyed this free lesson on how to play rhythm guitar, you’ll love these other lessons we have for you below!

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