Play McCartney’s Fingerpicking Pattern from “Yesterday”
Here’s another way to use monotonic-bass picking. Try plucking a bass note with the thumb followed by three eighth notes in the fingers.
These articles are excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine’s instructional guide, Acoustic Rock Essentials.
Playing effective rhythm is more than simply learning how to strum along with a beat—it involves finding the unique groove that fits each song best, whether that’s integrating strummed passages with bass notes, palm muting, syncopation, accents, or other techniques.
You’ll also learn how related chords fit together to form chord progressions on guitar, create your own songs and transpose them into different keys, expand your major- and minor-pentatonic solos, and much more.
Laid-Back Modern Rock Groove
Some modern rock and pop tunes get a boost by injecting a laid-back groove with a 16th-note swing feel.
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Learn the Bo Diddley Beat
The so-called Bo Diddley beat, shown in Example 5a may seem difficult at first, but if you break the beat down into a 16th-note subdivision, you’ll find a 3–3–2 pattern in the first half of the measure that may help you get a handle on it.
Borrow Chords from Related Keys
Finding a chord progression’s parallel major or minor key is easy: simply take the letter name of the original key and then flip it to major or minor.
Monotonic-Bass-Patterns
A cousin of alternating-bass fingerpicking, monotonic-bass fingerpicking keeps your thumb on the same bass note, instead of alternating between two or three notes.
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How to Fingerpick the Beatles’ “Julia”
John Lennon added an interesting twist in the Beatles’ “Julia” by playing the same bass strings in the same order for each chord, regardless of which string held the root.
Learn the Acoustic Guitar Basics from the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon”
This pattern lifted from bluegrass boom-chuck rhythm alternates bass notes with strums, as shown in Ex. 2a. You can mix bass notes and strum patterns in many ways.
Play Acoustic Guitar Like John Oates: Learn the Classic Two-Bar Rock Rhythm from ‘Maneater’ [VIDEO]
Strum through this pattern on one chord, and you can hear the verse rhythm behind the Strokes’ “Last Night,” the rhythm pattern behind Hall and Oates’s “Maneater,” or the recurring anthemic rhythm in the Doors’ “Touch Me.”
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How to Make Great Rock Strumming Patterns from Simple Rhythms
The steady eighth-note pattern is about as simple as they come, but it’s the consistent use of downstrokes that gives this rhythm pattern its character.
Use the Flatted Fifth in Your Blues Scale Licks
One great way to use the flatted fifth is to approach it from below, ascending from the fourth.
Simple Rhythms Make Great Patterns
Sometimes, you only need a simple trick to create the right feel, and that’s the key to the groove in Example 1a.
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Learn a Classic Two-Bar Rock Rhythm Pattern
Example 6a shows a syncopated rhythm that has become a staple of classic rock, modern rock, and pop.
Laid-Back Modern Rock Groove
Some modern rock and pop tunes get a boost by injecting a laid-back groove with a 16th-note swing feel. Example 7a shows one common syncopated groove you can get with this feel, and Example 7b shows how you might embellish it to sound similar to Train’s hit “Drops of Jupiter.”
Play Scratch Rhythms on the Backbeat
A great way to add a percussive pop to your rhythm patterns is to play scratch rhythms on beats two and four of each measure, simulating the sound of a backbeat snare drum.
A Classic Blues Rhythm Pattern
Blues and rock are two styles that are heavily intertwined, and the rhythm pattern in Example 3 instills more of a bluesy sound into your rhythm simply because it’s a common rhythm pattern in blues tunes.
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Piano-Ballad Style Fingerpicking Pattern
Monotonic-bass fingerpicking, in which your thumb keeps playing the same bass note instead of alternating between two or three notes, is common in acoustic blues but works great in folk and rock, too.
Rock Fingerpicking Pattern in 6/8 Time
Example 2 shows a pattern in 6/8 time, the way many players interpret the traditional classic “House of the Rising Sun.”
Learn to Navigate the Minor-Pentatonic Scale
Five patterns can unlock the fingerboard for both the minor- and major-pentatonic scale.