Lesson Tag: 16th note rhythm

Here’s a great application of our 16th-note rhythm pattern, and it also gives us a chance to work on our key of E chords. One additional challenge here is the concept of changing chords between beats rather than right on the beat – a very common practice that you’ll hear over and over again in every genre of music.

Plucking out various downstrokes and upstrokes is a great way to open up the rhythm a bit, and it allows us to create endless variations while keeping the basic pattern intact.

Now that we’ve played the rhythm with a metronome, let’s put it to a chord progression. For our first example, we’ll use the familiar key of G.

Now we break into the world of 16th-note rhythms. This particular rhythm is played using both downstrokes and upstrokes, and it has an accent in three places. You will LOVE this rhythm, and you’ll find yourself wanting to play it (and its many variations) all the time.