Rhythm Guitar – Page 21 – Country Guitar Online

Country & Bluegrass Strumming Course Overview

April 13, 2025November 9, 2016 by Devin

easy classic country and bluegrass strumming patterns lesson one

Overview – Country & Bluegrass Rhythm Course

Lesson ID: A0101

What makes a strumming pattern sound country and bluegrass? In this guitar course, I’ll teach you several of my favorite strumming patterns that have a nice country and bluegrass twang. We’ll start with the most basic strumming pattern in lesson one, and then work our way up to more advanced strumming concepts as we progress through the lesson series. At the end of this course, you’ll have a ton of awesome strumming patterns that you can use with your favorite classic country and bluegrass songs.

How to Mix Country Crosspicking with Your Strumming

April 13, 2025October 19, 2016 by Devin

country and bluegrass crosspicking patterns guitar lesson

Lesson ID: A0098

In this guitar lesson, we’ll show you some country and bluegrass crosspicking patterns that’ll help you improve your pick control. After we learn the patterns and discuss proper technique, we’ll go over how you can mix these patterns with your country strumming to spice up your rhythm guitar playing.

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Crosspicking Overview
01:25 min	Crosspicking Pattern 1
03:31 min	Pick Direction
04:21 min	Crosspicking Pattern 2
05:17 min	Proper Technique
06:47 min	Changing Chords
08:07 min	How to Mix Crosspicking with Country Strumming
15:38 min	Shifting to Different Strings
16:48 min	Intermediate Crosspicking/Strumming Rhythm

Crosspicking Patterns TAB Crosspicking Drills TAB Woodtone Strings

Country Bluegrass Chord Embellishments with Triplets

April 13, 2025October 13, 2016 by Devin

Lesson 9 – Rhythm Fill Riffs and Lead Guitar Course

Course Outline Previous Lesson Next Lesson

Lesson ID: A0097

Till now in this series, we’ve learned the 5th position scales in the key of G that are used to create country and bluegrass style fills. We combined all these scales into one “hybrid” scale and applied it to different chord progressions. Most of the riffs we studied were played with eighth notes and sixteenth notes.

In this lesson, we’re going to add a bit more rhythm variety to our country and bluegrass fills with triplets. I’ll give a brief overview of triplets in the first video below. If you’d like to read more about triplets, you can head over to our triplets music theory page. In the second video of this post, I’ll teach you six nice triplet style chord embellishments that you can play over the G, C, and D chords. In the third video, we’ll run through a chord progression example you can use for practice.

Overview

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Lesson Overview
03:14 min	What’s a triplet?
06:09 min	Using Triplets with Country and Bluegrass

Chord Embellishments

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Overview
00:28 min	Sixteenth Note Country & Bluegrass Rhythm
01:51 min	Syncopated Rhythm Breakdown
05:29 min	G Chord Embellishments with Triplets
10:39 min	C Chord Embellishments with Triplets
15:45 min	D Chord Embellishments with Triplets
18:40 min	Practice with a Chord Progression

Practice Along

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Progression – Rhythm Only
00:58 min	Progression with the Chord Embellishments
04:00 min	Practice Along with Me

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Chord Embellishments TAB Practice Progression TAB More About Triplets Woodtone Strings

Honey, You Don’t Know My Mind

April 13, 2025October 4, 2016 by Devin

Lesson 8 – Rhythm Fill Riffs and Lead Guitar Course

Course Outline Previous Lesson Next Lesson

Lesson ID: A0096

Last lesson, we used the hybrid country and bluegrass scale to improvise with fill riffs over the song “Cripple Creek”. We went over the chord progression, some beginner nice fill riffs, and some more advanced fill riffs for the intermediate players.

In this guitar lesson, we’re going to practice the 5th position key of G hybrid scale over the song “Honey, You Don’t Know My Mind”. First, we’ll break down the song’s chord progression and strumming. Then, I’ll teach you three different variations of the song’s instrumental break — we’ll have a version for the beginner pickers, a more complicated intermediate version, and an advanced version for the experienced pickers. This is another great song to play at your next jam!

Lesson Overview

Rhythm Breakdown

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Instrumental Break Chord Progression
01:59 min	Verse Chord Progression
04:42 min	Strumming Overview
06:00 min	Alternating Bass Line
09:08 min	Strumming – Pick DU Pick DU
10:28 min	Strumming – Pick DU Pick UDU
12:19 min	Strumming – Pick D Pick D Pick Pick Pick U UDU

Intro & Instrumental Break Chord Progression

Verse Chord Progression

Strumming Pattern Ideas

Pattern 1

Pick D Pick D — we’re calling this one the “boom chick” pattern

Pattern 2

Pick DU Pick DU — hear this one in action at 08:45 in the video above

Pattern 3

Pick DU Pick UDU — crank it up a notch with this one at 10:28

Pattern 4

Pick D Pick D Pick Pick Pick U UDU — hear a sample at 12:19

Instrumental Breaks

Scroll down on this tab to watch three different instrumental break guitar lesson videos — beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The beginner break is a combo of the “boom chick” strumming pattern and a nice melodic bass line. The intermediate version adds a little more complexity to the beginner break. The advanced version is tricky but I’d recommend trying to learn it if you’re a beginner to intermediate player because it’ll push your pickin’ to the next level!

Video 1 – Beginner Instrumental Break

Video Start Time	Beginner Break Topic
00:00 min	Overview
02:01 min	Measures 1 and 2
04:37 min	Measures 3 and 4
07:00 min	Measures 5 and 6
09:22 min	Measures 7 and 8
11:00 min	Measure 9
11:56 min	All the way through for practice

Video 2 – Intermediate Instrumental Break

Video Start Time	Intermediate Break Topic
00:00 min	Measures 1 and 2
03:12 min	Measures 3 and 4
04:45 min	Measures 5 and 6
07:01 min	Measures 7 and 8
08:24 min	Measure 9
08:59 min	All the way through for practice

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Video 3 – Advanced Instrumental Break

Video Start Time	Intermediate Break Topic
00:54 min	Measure 1
05:05 min	Measure 2
07:12 min	Measure 3
08:52 min	Measure 4
11:11 min	Measure 5
12:46 min	Measure 6
15:02 min	Measure 7
15:23 min	Measure 8
17:28 min	Measure 9
18:02 min	Recap
20:05 min	All the way through for practice

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Short Fill Riffs

In this video, I’ll show y’all 16 awesome country/bluegrass sounding fill riffs. These’ll be short fills that you can play over C and G chords. They sound great with “Honey, You Don’t Know My Mind” or you can use them with any other song in the key of G. I’ve added some scale charts to the next tab for reference. Each fill riff in this video is built around the 5th position key of G hybrid country/bluegrass scale. Visualize the scale as you learn each fill so you can start piecing together where these notes are coming from.

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Fill Riff Overview
01:58 min	Four Beginner C Chord “2e&a” Fill Riffs
04:15 min	Four Intermediate C Chord “2e&a” Fill Riffs
07:17 min	Four Beginner G Chord “2e&a” Fill Riffs
10:07 min	Four Intermediate G Chord “2e&a” Fill Riffs

Member Content

Scale Charts

G Major Scale

G Blues Scale

G Hybrid Country & Bluegrass Scale

Chords & Lyrics Beginner Break TAB Intermediate Break TAB Advanced Break TAB Short Fills TAB Woodtone Strings