When you’re first learning how to play guitar, it can really hurt to press down your guitar strings. The majority of guitars straight out of the box from the factory come with high action which means the strings are far away from the fretboard and tough to press down. To fix this, you can have your guitar set up by a guitar tech — they can lower your guitar strings by lowering your saddle, adjusting guitar neck relief, etc. This can make a cheap starter guitar feel like an expensive high quality guitar.
Rhythm Guitar
Beginner Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar
Bluegrass rhythm guitar is one of the most important parts of a bluegrass band. Since there typically aren’t drums in a bluegrass band, the rhythm guitar player sets the pace instead. In this lesson we’ll go over several important bluegrass rhythm guitar techniques that you need to know. This lesson is geared towards beginners but there’s some good stuff for all skill levels.
Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
---|---|
00:00 min | Lesson Overview |
00:57 min | Drums of the Bluegrass Band |
01:41 min | Basic Boom Chick Pattern |
02:30 min | Chord Progression Example |
05:44 min | Turnaround Riff |
08:12 min | Rhythm Hammer-Ons |
09:42 min | Filler Riff Between the G and C Chords |
10:30 min | G Lick Ending |
Lynyrd Skynyrd Style Blues Progression
In this lesson we’re going to go over an awesome Lynyrd Skynyrd style blues progression that involves hybrid picking. If you’re new to hybrid picking, you might also want to check out my hybrid picking lesson series. In this particular lesson, we’ll focus on using the pick, middle finger, and ring finger.
Once you master this style, it’s really fun to use at a jam sessions. For example, when you’re playing the twelve bar blues at a jam, trading lead back and forth, you can use this hybrid picking style when it’s your turn to play the rhythm part. It always sounds great when you can start out strumming during one section of a song, then switch to a hybrid picking style during another section. This adds some variation that makes your music sound much more interesting to your listeners.
Acoustic 12 Bar Blues in the Key of E
In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn a basic 12 bar blues progression. The 12 bar blues is the format of most blues songs and it’ll come in very handy when you’re jamming with friends because you’ll be able to take turns playing this progression and trading lead back and forth.