Essential Electric Guitar Techniques

To put these electric guitar techniques to use, you need an amp or effects pedal that can layer your tone with some gain or distortion. This is more a rock orientated lesson, as the other lessons in the rhythm guitar section deal with a wider spectrum of genres.

When using gain and/or distortion, you have to change the way you play your music, if only because distortion muddies up chords and phrasings that would usually sound beautiful played clean.

That's where the "power chord" comes in. To improve your power chord precision, go to the lesson page Right Here, otherwise stick around for some classic electric guitar techniques.

Electric Guitar Techniques - Classic Rock & Open Position

Open position chords are often the first chords you learn, but with a distortion or gain effect, you'll find Major or minor chords (or their modifications) sound, well, kind of messy. This is because the note responsible for the chord being Major or minor (the "3rd") is not as harmonically "stable" - it creates a wavering effect.

To get cleaner sounding, more defined open chords you can use a method Angus Young from AC/DC used a lot (and many others to be fair) which is to block out the 3rd in the chord. Below are the 4 open position chords with the major or minor note blocked out.

This technique is used a lot in rock for the reasons above and it makes the music sound more... serious.

Electric Guitar Techniques - Climbing in Key

Another common electric guitar technique is to start in a regular chord shape and move part of that shape up the fretboard, in scale, to create a unique effect.

If you start with an A power chord, for example, you can keep the open root note string of A the same while you move part of the shape around and experiment with maybe just two movable strings up the fretboard...

(Sorry if the sound quality isn't very good - this is to cater for people with slower connection speeds)

Very simple, but effective, and by grounding the root note while your moving around the fretboard, you're creating a very different sounding progression to the usual "move everything in unison" technique.

You're free then to add some lead guitar fills within that key - good if you're the only guitarist in the band or just practicing on your own!

Electric Guitar Techniques - Mixing it Up

Rhythm guitar and rock aren't all about power chords and big chunky riffs. You should also consider the use of single notes, single strings to travel through your progressions more freely.

Simple lead guitar fills between the chords can act as links that the human ear responds well to - it's like being lead through a journey... kind of.

Take a listen to the sample below and take note of how the single string phrases link up the powerchords...

So try and play around with simple lead guitar fills to liven up your riffs (and use alternate picking for the single-string parts!). There aren't really any "rules" for that, apart from perhaps knowing your scales so it'll all fit into a particular key. However, don't be afraid to venture outside regular scales - move around the fretboard and inject some interesting rhythms. The single string phrases can add some "groove" as mini-interludes, just like in the example above.

Electric Guitar Techniques - The 2 String Bar

This is crossing over into lead guitar, but this style of playing would be a useful addition to those fills we've been talking about.

The most basic chord possible, a power chord, consists of the root and fifth notes. If you barre your fingers vertically across just two strings as shown in the diagram below, you get a sharp, punchy playing effect that really compliments rock and blues styles...

Index and ring fingers are most commonly used for such riffs, you just have to make sure you don't hit 3 strings by accident by learning to apply the right amount of fretting pressure.

Electric Guitar Techniques - More Intricate Playing

The examples above have all been very defined ways of playing, but there are ways to get more intricate with your distorted riffs without sounding like a wall of noise or mush.

Arpeggios can be used (a method of playing each string in a chord separately) and this will be covered more in the lead guitar section, but in the example below you'll see how simple arpeggios can fit into a riff nicely.

So there are some classic electric guitar techniques for you to experiment around with. Hope you got something valuable out of this!

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