We’ve said this many times within these pages: the majority of most electric guitarists’ performance time is spent playing rhythm – and, as such, it’s pretty important to practise this aspect of your playing. Now, we don’t want to bring up the thorny subject of what constitutes rhythm guitar, and, of course, the line between rhythm and lead is somewhat blurry. Suffice to say, here in our massive six-page tutorial, we’re taking the broadest definition of rhythm guitar. Chords, picking, strumming, riffs, single-note accompaniments, various aspects of timing and more all feature here. And with 21 tab examples, complete with recorded audio tracks and guitar-less backing mixes to jam along to, all in different styles of music, there’s enough here to keep us all rocking until, well, until next month’s issue comes out!
01 DOWNPICKING: PUNK
No surprises here! This example mixes up core punk ingredients of powerchords, palm muting and downpicking. At 160bpm, the tempo is fairly rapid,
