Guitar Tricks Online Guitar Lessons

Right Hand Rhythmic Variation

 
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In this lesson we'll explore a classic trick, where you delay one of your upbeats to create a dramatic sounding “stumble” within the groove.

You start with the same downbeat just like before, but then we leave out the following downstroke and follow that silence with the regular upstroke. The rhythm is “1 (e and) a”, and after that it's just business as usual.

This can work really well at the top of a new section, for example a chorus or a verse, but if you use it more than just once it can get really distracting and alter the basic groove too much. Let's try it in a simple example.

Instructor Anders Mouridsen
Tutorial:
Advanced Country Strumming Patterns
Styles:
Difficulty:
print notation download lesson open guitar tuner
Right Hand Rhythmic Variation song notation
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Right Hand Rhythmic Variation By Anders Mouridsen

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Questions & Answers

1 week ago
Couple off questions: Could you show the strokes when strings are strummed, the view in the video is flat and not 3 dimensional to match what is said with strings being hit. Also, when a few chords within a bar vary with an open string, i hear the open but do not see the instructor hitting that open string with the right hand. Could you share if video is off or something I am missing.
Mike Olekshy 1 week ago

Hey there - thanks so much for your questions! I agree the video doesn't really show the details of how all the strings are being hit, and, also, Anders is a little inconsistent when he teaches and then plays through the mini-song. The best way to get the most of this lesson is to follow the tablature - the tab will tell you exactly which strings to hit and when. This mini-song is very challenging up to full tempo, so I recommend working on this much slower until you have it down confidently. Hope this helps!