Rhythm Guitar – by far the most important aspect of guitar playing. For instance name one great soloist who was not also a great rhythm player. Jimi Hendrix – developed a whole new style of rhythm playing (little wing, and almost everything else he recorded). Hendrix spent years playing rhythm guitar on the ‘Chitlin Circuit‘ for Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson among many others. Eric Clapton – Check out any of Claptons live recordings, but I dont think he’s ever been better than on the Bluesbreaker with Eric Clapton album. Rory Gallagher – A good shout for the best ever popular music guitarist. He could do it all; fingerstyle blues and ragtime, searing solos and great rhythm on electric, acoustic and mandolin. My favourite Bert Jansch…his style is all about rhythm with an attack on the guitar verging on violent, Neil young, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Ray Vaughan the list could go on forever, but the point being, the easiest way to become a better guitarist is to work on rhythm.
As an introduction to this, there is a PDF below which outlines a couple of rhythmic possibilites around G, D, Am chord sequence using a plectrum. This can’t be comprehensive as there are as many ways of playing 3 chords as there are of cooking eggs, but its just an overview really. I’ll outline the same chord progression played fingerstyle in the next week
The music can be played and downloaded by clicking on the link below, and the tab printed below. Alternatively, both mp3 file and tab can be downloaded at the foot of the page (as an mp3 and PDF respectively) clicking the PDF link an by right clicking the mp3 link and selecting save as or save link as depending on your browser. Both have been scanned with AVG internet security 9.0
Paul Tasker Guitar Tuition – Rhythm Guitar
Rhythm Guitar PDF (2Mb)
Rhythm Guitar mp3 (1.6Mb)
Hi, Jimi Hendrix is my all time top artist and I don’t think there will ever be another like him. That said BB King is another all time favourite but of course from a different style and sound though. Thanks
I agree…he was different. I like BB King a lot too, but as i’m more drawn to rhythm in all its shapes and forms, he didnt quite make my list. I’ve tried very hard to copy his vibrato though!