Hi! I’m Nate Savage and welcome to the Rhythm Guitar Quick-Start Series. Playing rhythm
guitar is a really essential skill to have, whether you just want to learn your favorite
songs, you want to play with your friends and jam with them or whether you want to play
live music. It’s a really important skill to have.
Whether you’re brand new to rhythm guitar or you’ve been playing for a while and you
just want to get to that next level, this series is for you. I know there are a lot
of things to consider in rhythm guitar and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. That’s
why I created this series. I want to give you the most fundamental things you’re going
to need to lay a solid foundation for your rhythm guitar playing.
Being a good rhythm guitarist is something that it takes time and practice to develop
but it’s really important and unfortunately a lot of newer players tend to focus just
on practicing lead guitar when the reality of it is that probably 80% if you’re playing
live or with your friends, 80% of what you’re going to be playing is rhythm guitar, bass
and not leads. With that in mind, being a good solid rhythm
guitarist can really set you apart from the crowd. If your rhythm guitar playing is solid, people
are going to enjoy playing with you and they’re going to enjoy listening to you and you’re
going to be the one that gets the gig. So, the goal of this series is to give you a solid
foundation and the key things that you’re going to need to know as a rhythm guitarist.
By the end of it, you’re going to be able to play live, if that’s your goal, better.
You’re going to be able to play with your friends and learn songs better too. And just
so you know, it doesn’t matter if you have an acoustic or electric guitar for this series.
All of the things that I’m going to teach you in here are equally important to both.
Now we’re not going to focus too much on theory throughout the series. This is a quick-start
series, right? So I wanted you to focus on getting your hands on the guitar and playing
the most important things for you as a rhythm guitar player. We’re going to go over power
chords, bar chords, open chords, the most important chord progressions you’re going
to need to know as a musician, and then we’re going to switch our focus to your strumming
hand. You’re going to learn some of the most common strumming patterns that you need
to know as well as work on your timing. The first thing that we’re going to go over
is power chords. We’re going to learn some shapes for your power chords and how to move
them all around the neck. And then we’re going to move on to bar chords. I know bar
chords are source of frustrations for a lot of newer players, so I’m going to give you
some tips to make your bar chords sound great. Now as a rhythm guitarist, it’s important for
you to know all of your open chords. I’m going to teach you the most essential open
chords that you’re going to need in your little chord library. Once we get these essential
chord shapes down, like I mentioned earlier we’re going to go over some of the most
important strumming patterns for you to know. These strumming patterns that I’m going
to teach you are kind of like the building blocks or the fundamentals for a lot of more
advanced strumming patterns, so this is going to be really important for you to get down.
After that, we’re going to start working on developing your timing. That’s one of
the most critical aspects of rhythm guitar that’s often ignored. The cool thing about
working on your timing is you don’t have to have your guitar with you. You can be anywhere.
You can be in your car driving, listening to the radio, in a waiting room, it doesn’t matter.
And finally, once we get your timing in order,
I’m going to show you how to kind of embellish your strumming through single bass notes and
muted strums. These are two little aspects of strumming that can really dress up an otherwise
mundane strumming pattern. I always think that applying everything that you’re working
on the guitar to real music is really important to helping you get better and grow as a musician.
So, throughout this series, I’ve supplied you with a couple of jam tracks that you can use
to work on the stuff that we’re going over. It’s just a little more fun that using a
metronome. Get ready for some really rewarding things to work on. If you apply yourself and
work on this stuff, you’re going to see a dramatic improvement in your rhythm guitar playing.
Thanks for watching. In the next lesson, we’re
going to go over some basic power chords. If you have any questions at all, you can
leave them here in the comments. I’ll get back to you there or you can email me, nate@guitarsystem.com. See you.