Rhythmic Modifications
Do you ever find yourself stuck in an endless loop of searching for new material to play? The truth is, unlocking creativity on the guitar isn’t just about learning more—it’s about making the most of what you already know.
In this guide, I’ll show you a simple yet powerful technique to modify any rhythm, instantly adding new life to your playing. These rhythmic variations will help you create fresh, exciting sounds, craft the perfect parts for your songs, and stand out at jam sessions, open mic nights, and gigs.
Ready to take your playing to the next level? Watch the video below and start transforming your rhythm today!
Video Transcript
Base Rhythm
To begin any rhythmic exercise, the first step is to create a base rhythm. We will use this rhythm.
When you do this independently, you can use any rhythm. Let’s play through this rhythm to hear what it sounds like before we modify it.
Variation 1
Now that we've established the base rhythm, let's modify it. The rhythm will remain the same. What we will change is how we play the notes over it. This is a great way to extract as much value as possible from a single idea. The initial idea was fine, but why stop there? It’s better to take that idea, maintain the same rhythm, and explore how many modifications you can make. See if you can improve it a bit. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t; however, by putting anything through this process, you will gain much more from any rhythm you create.
The first thing we will do is add some muted notes, which will create that cool percussive sound you always hear in music.
Variation 2
For this second example, let’s add some root notes. This addition brings dynamics to your playing. By striking the full chord, you achieve a nice, loud volume. Playing the root notes tends to lower the sound just a bit, creating a nice contrast that makes things stand out more than simply playing everything the same way, as we did in the first example. Now, let's play through this example.
Variation 3
For this modification, we'll still start with that base rhythm, but this time, the rhythm changes more than before because we're going to add ties. Ties are one of my favorite ways to modify a rhythm. They create space, so you're not hearing the same number of rhythms as before. Now, things are ringing. With a tie, you play the first note, then don't play the note to which it is tied. You just let that ring.
Let’s play through this one.
Variation 4
Often, you want to try a little bit of everything within a rhythm. So if that's exactly what we'll do this time, we’ll add some muted notes, some root notes, and some ties. Let's see how this sounds before we move on to another rhythm.
Base Rhythm 2
Let’s do this with triplet rhythm. Here is the new base rhythm.
Let’s add in some chords and play this rhythm.
Variation 1
Let's add in some muted notes.
Variation 2
Now, let's go ahead and add some root notes and see how it changes the feel again. The rhythm remains the same in this example; we're just adding that dynamic change by mixing full chords with root notes.
Variation 3
For this one, we will add a tie in each measure. Again, the base rhythm we started with is the same, but adding a tie does change the end result.
Final Thoughts
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