Desi Serna - Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies

Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Media and software compilation copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958346

ISBN 978-1-119-02287-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-02288-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-02289-3 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Rhythm is the pace and pattern of a piece of music. Technique is the procedure and skill used to sound notes. Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies is where you get a grip on keeping time and hone your guitar-playing chops so that you play music well and progress to new levels.

This book covers a wide array of rhythm and technique topics, with focus on the most used and most practical skills. You get a grip on keeping time and playing strum patterns, as well as reading and counting basic rhythms. Your fretting-hand fingers get in shape by working with guitar articulations such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and bends, and you explore various ways in which you can finger chords and fret scales in order to play to your strengths. On the other hand (literally), you work with various methods of flatpicking, fingerpicking, and hybrid picking skills that add variety to your playing. You also produce harmonics, play in alternate tunings, use a slide, and work with a tremolo system. Throughout the entire book you see references to popular songs and familiar artists, which helps you connect the concepts to the music you know and love the types of songs you regularly hear on Top 40 and classic-rock radio stations.

The traditional approach to rhythm usually emphasizes all the aspects of standard musical notation and covers the gamut of note values and time signatures. This book focuses only on what you need to know in order to play popular strum patterns and read the most basic of rhythm charts. Instead of making you work to develop advanced skills at high levels of proficiency, this book serves as an overview of the most practical of guitar techniques that are common to popular styles and useful to increasing your versatility.

Heres what sets this book apart from other guitar resource materials:

• The practicality and efficiency of the content: If you dont need to know a certain topic or technique to play guitar and understand popular music, I dont present it here.
• The number of familiar song references: Say goodbye to learning abstract ideas without knowing how they apply to the music you know and love! I refer to some of the most popular songs and famous guitarists of all time in the pages that follow.

As you work your way through this book, keep in mind that sidebars and Technical Stuff icons are skippable. Here are a few other things to note:

• All the information applies to both acoustic and electric guitar unless otherwise noted.
• I use six-string guitars and standard tuning in all examples and figures unless otherwise noted.
• You can apply much of the information in the book to bass guitar, too.
• I use a right-handers perspective throughout the book.
• You have to look up and practice popular song references on your own. I dont include the music here. (If youre not sure where to find the music for a given song referenced in the text, check out www.musicdispatch.com , www.musicnotes.com , or www.sheetmusicplus.com .)

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and you want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to go directly to the web page.

Before beginning the book, be sure to get your fingers and guitar prepared for optimal playing. Make sure the nails on your fretting hand are trimmed and filed so that they dont interfere with your fretting of the strings. Also, make sure that your guitar has been professionally set up so that its easy to play and stays in tune.

Finally, in case youre curious, I use the programs GuitarPro ( www.guitar-pro.com ), Neck Diagrams ( www.neckdiagrams.com ), and Sibelius ( www.sibelius.com ) to create notation and diagram figures.

This book is geared toward experienced beginners and intermediate guitar players. At the very least, you need to know the basics of guitar playing. You should have completed a beginner-level course, like Guitar For Dummies,