• forward arrow
    Main Menu

  • Book & Article Categories

  • forward arrow
    Main Menu

  • Book & Article Categories

Home
Academics & The Arts Books
Music Books
Instruments Books
Guitar Books
Desi Serna
|
Published:
April 27, 2015

Guitar Rhythm and Techniques For Dummies, Book + Online Video and Audio Instruction

Buy Now
Subscribe on Perlego
Engage with Book

Overview

Improve your guitar-playing rhythm, feel, and timing

If you want to improve your timing, sharpen your technique, or get inspired by new ideas, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies breaks down the basics of reading, counting, strumming, and picking rhythms on guitar to make you an ace on the axe in no time. With the help of this friendly guide, you'll learn to play examples of eighth and sixteenth note rhythms—including common strum patterns heard in popular music—to improve your guitar rhythm, feel, and timing. Plus, access to audio downloads and online video lessons complement the coverage presented in the book, giving you the option of supplementing your reading with additional visual and audio learning.

There's no denying that guitar is one of the coolest musical instruments on the planet. Okay, perhaps undeniably the coolest. Whether you bow at the feet of Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, the Edge, or Eddie Van Halen, they all have one thing in common: they make it look incredibly, naturally

easy! However, anyone who's actually picked up a guitar knows that mastering rhythm and technique is something that takes a lot of practice—not to mention good coaching. Luckily, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies makes your aspirations to play guitar like the pros attainable with loads of helpful step-by-step instruction on everything from mastering hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides to perfecting your picking—and beyond.

  • Covers strum patterns, articulations, picking techniques, and more
  • Showcases musical styles such as pop, rock, blues, folk, and funk
  • Includes techniques for playing with both your right and left hand
  • Provides access to online audio tracks and video instruction so you can master the concepts and techniques presented in the book

Whether you're new to guitar or an advanced player looking to improve your musical timing and skills, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies quickly gets you in the groove before the rhythm gets you.

Read More

About The Author

Desi Serna has built a substantial online platform as an engaging and approachable guitar guru-a guitar player and teacher with more than 10,000 hours of experience providing private guitar lessons and classes. Serna is hailed as a "music-theory expert" by Rolling Stone magazine.

Sample Chapters

Read Sample
guitar rhythm and techniques for dummies, book + online video and audio instruction

CHEAT SHEET

This Cheat Sheet has some handy tips that you can keep in your practice area for quick reference.Use these techniques to review your basic rhythms and warm up your hands at the beginning of a playing session. Before you begin, trim and file the nails on your fretting hand so that nothing comes between your fingertips and the strings.
View Cheat Sheet
View Cheat Sheet

HAVE THIS BOOK?

View Book Companion Site
Access practice tests
Additional Book Resources

Articles from
the book

For many guitarists, coordinating their playing with singing proves to be a big challenge. They can devote their attention to one activity or the other, but not both. As soon as the singing begins, the guitar parts fall apart, and vice versa. Although playing guitar and singing is a skill in itself that not everyone is equally suited for, there are some things you can do to make improvements: Learn from pianists.
Read More
Read More
Here are ten songs that are not only well known but also well suited for adding an array of guitar techniques to your playing. The list runs the gamut from acoustic to electric, from soft rock to heavy metal. These examples are useful to both rhythm and lead guitarists. “Purple Haze” (1967) Although much has been said about the guitar solo, it’s the opening guitar riffing that puts this one on this list.
Read More
Read More
Rhythms and techniques don’t have much appeal or meaning in and of themselves. It’s when you hear guitarists use rhythms and techniques in musical and expressive ways that your interest is piqued and you get inspired. Chet Atkins C.G.P. (1924–2001) This country gentleman is for serious fingerpickers only. Chet is one of the most respected musicians in the history of country music, and highly regarded among guitar players specifically for his complex, finger‐style technique.
Read More
Read More
One technique related to how guitarists alternate pick is called crosspicking. No, it doesn’t involve crossing your fingers. With this technique, guitarists use a pick to repeatedly cross over a group of strings, mimicking the finger rolls used by banjo players. Crosspicking typically involves three strings and sixteenth notes played in syncopated figures of three as you see below using parts of an open‐position C chord.
Read More
Read More
In most performance situations, guitarists aren’t given a score that includes all their parts note-for-note. Instead, they receive a lead sheet or chord chart, which is a condensed version of the music with all the basic information necessary for a band to play the song together. As you work with a lead sheet, pay attention to its most important details: The key: If you understand how to read key signatures, you can determine the key that way.
Read More
Read More
This Cheat Sheet has some handy tips that you can keep in your practice area for quick reference.Use these techniques to review your basic rhythms and warm up your hands at the beginning of a playing session. Before you begin, trim and file the nails on your fretting hand so that nothing comes between your fingertips and the strings.
Read More
Read More
Tapping, also called finger tapping or fretboard tapping, is a technique where you tap the fingertips on your picking hand onto the guitar’s fretboard to sound notes. It’s basically hammer-ons performed with the picking hand. Although forms of tapping exist in many styles of music, the hard-rock genre is where the technique is best known.
Read More
Read More
Apart from adding vibrato, trem bars are used to lower the pitch of notes on the guitar. This movement is called a dive and can be shallow or deep, depending on whether a player wants to be subtle or dramatic. When you hear a trem‐bar dive return a note to its original pitch, it’s called a dive and return. Sometimes players dive on one note and return on another.
Read More
Read More
When guitarists depress the bar before striking a note, and then release the pressure on the bar so that the pitch quickly rises to the target note, it’s called a scoop. Scoops create the impression that you’re bending or sliding into a note, but with a unique sound quality that comes only from a trem bar. Like dips, scoops are used to embellish notes in your lead lines, like Steve Vai does in his rendition of “Christmas Time Is Here” beginning at 0:51.
Read More
Read More
You will need to know how to finger major scale patterns, which include more notes and half-steps on the rhythm guitar. You take a look at the different ways to finger patterns and play in positions. The purpose here is to know the process that helps you choose fingerings and arrange parts, so you find what feels right and play to your strengths.
Read More
Read More
To begin, take a look at a few open-position chords and explore some alternate fingerings for the guitar that you may not have thought of, or perhaps thought were incorrect. Below, you see four E chord diagrams. The first diagram includes the most common fingering for this chord, the one that is always taught to be “correct.
Read More
Read More
One finger‐style technique you should familiarize yourself with is the practice of slapping the guitar strings to play notes or produce percussive sounds. Slapping can take on many forms and include a variety of techniques, and is especially prevalent in bass‐guitar playing, but the examples here focus only on a few practical applications in guitar playing.
Read More
Read More
Guitarists are not limited to only those harmonics that naturally occur at nodes along the open strings. Harmonics can be produced while strings are fretted, too. Doing so allows you to chime harmonics not otherwise accessible. When harmonics are produced in this manner, they’re called artificial harmonics. There are a few different ways to play artificial harmonics.
Read More
Read More
When a guitarist arranges a song’s main melody and chords together to form one part, it’s called playing — big surprise — chord melody. For this example, you play a version of the popular Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?,” which is an adaptation of an earlier folksong, “Greensleeves.” Before you try to play the arrangement below as written, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the melody.
Read More
Read More
When you play music on the rhythm guitar that has a constant tied-triplet feel with long and short notes, it’s called a shuffle or, more specifically, an eighth-note shuffle. In this case, rather than notate the music with continuous triplets and ties, the score is simplified by using plain eighth notes, but with a special performance note that instructs you to play them all in a long/short shuffle manner.
Read More
Read More
When playing the guitar, not all notes have values. In some situations you use a pitch to quickly lead into another, and it’s sounded only for a very brief moment. This is called a grace note. Grace notes are written in a score as smaller notes set slightly apart from the primary ones. They aren’t counted and don’t contribute to a measure’s number of beats.
Read More
Read More
Here, you play parts that combine artificial harmonics with regularly plucked guitar strings. You get introduced to the full concept of harp harmonics by plucking everything with your picking hand alone. You use this newfound technique to play through scales, arpeggiate chords, and create cascading effects. Notice that all the notes in the example below at the 12th fret are harmonics, and all the open strings are played in a normal fashion.
Read More
Read More
You can produce harmonics in a variety of ways on the guitar. To begin, you take a look at the nodes on an open string, which are the locations of what guitarists call natural harmonics. The first node you work with is found at the 12th fret. When you play an open string on your guitar, but graze it gently over the 12th fret while in the process, you chime a harmonic that is one octave higher than the open string’s frequency.
Read More
Read More
One harmonic technique you can use on the guitar involves using a pick. A pinch harmonic is one where you hold a pick very closely to its picking edge, so close that your finger and thumb rub against the string as you pluck it. Essentially, you pluck and graze the string at the very same time, producing a combination of a primary note and artificial harmonic.
Read More
Read More
As you practice playing eighth-note rhythms on the guitar, it’s a good time to work out a few examples that are not so much pattern based but more a combination of eighth notes and rests. Here, you see a resting rhythm that requires you to cut off the strings during moments of rest, specifically on beats two and three.
Read More
Read More
Slide is the technique of using a glass bottle or piece of metal piping on the guitar strings to, no surprise, slide into, out of, and in between notes. A slide acts like a nut or piece of fret wire, creating a new endpoint from which the strings rest and ring. Because a slide is not actually used to press strings down to the fretboard, but instead glides along top of the strings, it’s possible to play microtones, which are notes that fall between the semitones (between the frets).
Read More
Read More
Playing triplets on the guitar is a good way to add variety to your music. When you divide a quarter-note beat into two equal parts, it’s called an eighth note. When you divide a beat into three equal parts, it’s called an eighth-note triplet. A triplet is considered an irregular rhythm because its metric value is an odd number, as opposed to regular rhythms like eighths and sixteenths, which subdivide evenly.
Read More
Read More
One technique that is common to rhythm guitar is the use of string scratching. This is where strings are cut off and damped, but instead of resting and floating over them, the strings are strummed, producing a scratching sound. Perhaps the most well-known example of string scratching among guitar players is Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).
Read More
Read More
One technique you can use to vary your guitarmusic is by tapping. This example illustrates tapping with notes from pentatonic patterns 1 and 2 in A minor stretching between frets five and ten. Before you play it as written, consider how the same part could be played without tapping. Tapping the pentatonic scale.
Read More
Read More
When you combine alternate picking with sweep picking on the guitar, you get economy picking. This type of picking is so named because of its economy of movement. Alternate picking works well most of the time, but in some situations it’s more economical to reuse a stroke (usually the downstroke). These licks are perfect examples of economy picking.
Read More
Read More
When a guitarist rests the side of his hand across the bridge, and then comes onto the strings just enough to dampen the sound but not cut it off completely, it’s called palm muting. (Technically, it’s palm dampening, not muting, and you use the side of your hand, not the palm.) Typically, this technique is used on the lower‐pitched, wound strings, especially when playing power‐chord‐based songs.
Read More
Read More
There are moments in guitar playing when you pick through a pattern of notes that features only one note per string and moves directly from string to string in neighboring fashion. You play this way in the example below, using part of an A‐minor arpeggio pattern in the 12th position. Instead of trying to alternate pick these notes as you move across the strings, another option is to use one continuous downstroke to push your way down through all strings three to one.
Read More
Read More
When a guitarist’s approach to playing includes flatpicking and fingerpicking simultaneously, it’s called hybrid picking. This is accomplished by holding a pick in the conventional way, and then using your remaining fingers to pluck as well. One way to get started with this is by playing chords piano‐style as you do below.
Read More
Read More
As you alternate pick passages on guitar, you may notice that some string changes are easier than others. For most people, it’s easier to approach a string from the inside than the outside. You need to play through this example in order to grasp this concept. As you look at the tab, notice that the only strings in use are the third and fourth.
Read More
Read More
David Evans, who is better known by his stage name, “The Edge,” is the primary composer and guitarist for the band U2, which owes much of its sound and success to him. A master of using effects, The Edge has no interest in trying to match chops with blues/rock virtuosos. Instead, his aim is to craft unique and interesting guitar parts that serve his band’s innovative style of music.
Read More
Read More
Pentatonic patterns are extremely common in popular music, especially the rock and blues genres. They’re used to play melodies, riffs, lead guitar solos, and bass lines. The tips you find here focus on how you finger the patterns. Here, you see some optional fingerings for a few of the pentatonic scale patterns (namely, patterns one, two, and four).
Read More
Read More
Playing a chromatic-scale pattern is great way to exercise all four fingers on your fretting hand. In the following figure, you see two examples. The numbers indicate which fingers to use. Use alternate picking as you play up and down each chromatic pattern in order to improve the synchronization of both hands.
Read More
Read More
A rhythm pyramid like the one below is the most basic way in which a measure of music is subdivided. For practice, you can strum the different note values on open strings, chord shapes, or muted strings. Set your metronome to 80 beats per minute (BPM), give or take, and spend a few minutes alternating between quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes.
Read More
Read More
There’s only so much you can accomplish as a guitarist sitting at home alone and playing unaccompanied. Without a point of reference to keep you on pace, your time and tempo are likely to fluctuate, probably without your even realizing it. Without chord changes and song structures, you’re like to wander aimlessly during your practice sessions.
Read More
Read More
In order to bend strings on a guitar, you need to use a light gauge of strings. String gauge refers to the thickness of the guitar string — the larger the gauge, the heavier the string. Thickness is measured in thousandths of an inch, and string sets are categorized by the gauge of the first string specifically.
Read More
Read More
One technique you want to work on in order to improve your picking proficiency on the guitar is string skipping. This is where you jump over a string or more in the middle of a riff or solo. String skipping occurs when lead lines feature intervallic jumps. You get started with string skipping in the example below.
Read More
Read More
In traditional guitar notation, the letters p, i, m, and a are used to refer to the fingers on the picking hand. Taken from the Spanish language, here’s what the letters represent: p = pulgar (thumb) i = indice (index or first finger) m = medio (middle or second finger) a = anular (ring or third finger) You see a visual example of this Spanish fingering system in the following figure.
Read More
Read More
When guitarists alternate pick a note at a very fast, unspecified rate, it’s called tremolo picking. The pickstrokes are not set to specific note values; instead, a player picks as fast as he can steadily maintain. This technique is particularly common in mandolin playing. In this example, you play the open sixth string, E.
Read More
Read More
When musicians, whether they're guitarists or drummers, alter the rhythmic feel of a piece of music so that the tempo feels like it has been either cut in half or doubled, but in actuality the pulse and pace of the chords remain the same, it’s called half time and double time. Half and double time are most apparent when done on a drum kit.
Read More
Read More
A capo, which is short for capotasto, is a device that attaches to your guitar fretboard to raise the pitch of the open strings. A capo allows you to play in different positions and keys, but keep the same familiar chord fingerings you use at the end of the neck in the open position. Another reason guitarists use capos is to take advantage of favorable chord voicings that occur only as open forms.
Read More
Read More
The following figure is good for working on alternate guitar picking and getting to know the placement of the strings under your picking hand. Set your metronome to a comfortable tempo and rehearse the figure for a minute or two. Aside from moving across the strings in the two directions shown, you can use random movement and skip strings.
Read More
Read More
The following figure gets the blood flowing in your fretting-hand fingers. You can practice the fingerpicking pattern by playing at various tempos and over different types of chord progressions. Try changing the pattern by reversing the order of your fingers. Reversing your fingers, but still starting with the thumb is another option.
Read More
Read More
Load More Articles

Related Books

0:00
0:00
Listen now
Pause
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3

Frequently Asked Questions

No items found.

Get a Subscription