When i started
out with the guitar I was particularly impressed by those great
guitarists who played cool riffs and suddenly start a jaw-dropping
lead and then go back to the rhythm riff perfectly in time. How
do they do this?
After years
of practice I understood that they basically know how many notes
they will play per beat. And they play licks that fit with the
tempo and fill for one, two or for four beats.
So this is
an exercise for practicing lead and rhythm guitar.
Here we have
to focus on 4 bars (4 beats/bar). We play 3 bars of rhythm guitar
with the very simple A5 chord. The last bar we fill with lead.
We have 4 beats to play whatever we want. I’ve chosen to
practice two different licks. The first one is 16th notes mix
and the 2nd one is Am harmonic scale triplets.
Learn the
licks, and once you feel ready, play them into the rhythm. Once
you feel cool, start with the 2nd rhythm pattern for a realistic
riff. At the end I show how I feel the idea with an example in
Am harmonic scale. (A-B-C-D-E-F-G#)
I play 1
bar of rhythm guitar and 3 bars of lead. I know exactly the number
of notes I play so that I’ll be back in time on the first
beat of the 1st bar. I palm mute (picking hand) some notes to
add dynamics and accents. This is not the point of the lesson,
so feel free to play it your way.
The tempo
in the video is 116 bpm. Start at 90bpm or as slow as you need
to. This exercise is totally useless if you don’t practise
it with a metronome or a drum box. The metronome won’t stop
for you if you miss the last notes. The goal is to play both rhythm
and lead IN TIME.
