Four Interesting Ways to Use Rhythms in Your Guitar Playing That You May Not Have Thought of

Rhythm is a very interesting concept. Most of the time when people think of rhythm on guitar, they think about strumming some chords over a chord progression. This is the very basic concept of rhythm guitar. However, many musicians (without formal training) never think about how rhythm might affect their lead playing. So, for those aspiring rock guitarists who don’t have this formal training, let’s have a quick conversation about the benefits of rhythm within the context of lead guitar.

1) Rhythmic figures to your lead phrases

Most guitarists who aren’t conscious of their rhythmic structures in their leads end up playing the same four rhythmic structures over and over. If you find your playing gets boring when you improvise, this is probably your problem (or at least one of them).

 Learning rhythmic structures, understanding them, and internalizing them will allow you to execute these shapes on command. It will also give you a massive pool of endless ideas you can take from. Contrary to popular opinion, understanding music from a more formal or professional perspective doesn’t limit you. It allows you to see all the possibilities. It allows control.

2) Using rhythms on slides and bends:

One of my absolute favorite things to do is to experiment with how I use ornamentations and nuances (slides, bends, double stops) in unison with rhythmic structures I like. This takes everything gone over during the first part of this article and multiplies them by a seemingly infinite amount. Each rhythm structure has its own interesting sound. When combined with the interesting sounds of these nuances, you have so many possible different melodies and harmonies to work with.

To the left you’ll see a structure of eighth notes where we perform the bend starting on a down beat and another where we start on an upbeat. Below you’ll find the basic four sixteenth note shapes with multiple bends started on them. You would greatly benefit by simply adding all these bend variations to your playing.