When you first hear a catchy lick or riff, you may expect it to be a difficult lead technique requiring hours of practice to master. That’s a natural conclusion to jump to, since we often see images of lead guitarists quickly navigating their fretboards with blurred fingers. But many of the best licks and riffs by artists like the Beatles and Neil Young are really just made up of bits and pieces of easy chord shapes. This month you’ll learn how to apply a few tricks to these shapes and the way you put them together, so you can come up with your own ear-catching riffs.
Deconstruct Chord Shapes
When you look at a simple D chord, you may not see all the potential within that three-fingered shape, but you can find countless great riffs within this chord—the Beatles crafted the instantly recognizable lines to “Norwegian Wood” and “Here Comes the Sun” based on the first-position D chord. Keep this shape rooted in your mind while you explore Example 1 , which first shows a D chord, and then shows shapes you can access from this position by moving just one finger at a time. Many of these shapes have slightly different names—for instance, the first one to the right of the D chord is a Dsus4 (as explained in the Acoustic Rock Basics lesson “Sus and Add Chords” ). But we’re not worried about the names here; we’re more interested in how we can create interesting-sounding parts by embellishing a chord shape. Strum through each one and practice switching between them.
Once your fingers are comfortable with the shapes, you can use them to create melodies. Example 2 shows a melody to start with, focusing on single notes. The key to making Example 3 sound like this melody instead of a bunch of chords is to highlight the melody notes from Example 2 as you play through the riff. Notice how you’re strumming through four strings in the first and second measures, but in the third and fourth measures, only two or three strings are strummed—that’s because the melody notes are focused on the second and third strings in the later measures, so strumming through the whole chord (especially the higher notes on the higher strings) at those points would obstruct the melody.
Don’t worry about hitting precisely the strings shown in the notation every time—this can really hang up your ability to play through the riff. It’s much more important to focus on what the melody notes are, and when you do that, you’ll bring them out naturally. If you hit the melody note and a string above it instead of the string below it, it will probably still sound fine. The point is: don’t get so bogged down in the details that you lose the feel of the riff.
For more instruction on how to pull chords and progressions apart to create compelling guitar parts, see my full “Creating Chordal Riffs” lesson , available below, complete with video and a song in the style of Neil Young. And watch for next month’s Acoustic Rock Basics lesson here on AcousticGuitar.com.
Learn to deconstruct simple chord shapes and progressions to create classic-sounding riffs with this lesson in the Acoustic Rock Basics series from Acoustic Guitar !
This instructional guide gives you new tools to play interesting accompaniment in your songs. By learning how to look at easy chords and chord progressions as groups of smaller patterns, you'll create riffs in the style of Neil Young and the Beatles, and learn to add them to your own repertoire.
Download this Acoustic Guitar Guide including video and written instruction now!
Includes:
11 minutes of video instruction
Practical instruction on how to play riffs like those in “Norwegian Wood.”
Tab, chords, and lyrics for a full song, “Taken by the Law”
Andrew DuBrock is a freelance writer, transcriber, and musician in Portland, Oregon.
