Muted guitar rhythms didn’t just start with Rock music. The way we use it today has been around since the turn of the 20th century when country and blues guitar players would employ this rhythmic technique. The technique itself has endured since classical guitars came to be! Muting strings, combined with the right tones and effects, lends itself well to a heavy rock guitar sound.
In his course, Take 5: Muted Rock Rhythm, Angus Clark accelerates your grasp on this essential tool for playing rock music.
Here are 3 free muted rock rhythm guitar lessons from the course. For the full course, check out Angus Clark’s Take 5: Muted Rock Rhythm on TrueFire!
Level 5: Overview
Download the tab & notation for this muted rock rhythm guitar lesson
This is the mixed bag of stuff at an aggressive tempo. Let’s do it!
Level 5: Performance
Download the tab & notation for this muted rock rhythm guitar lesson
There are two sections to this piece:
A “Spotlight Kid” inspired section where inverted power chords (4ths) are played as stabs between sixteenth-note pedals on the 6h string. In this section, all of the stabs are played as up-strokes and the pedals are played as downstrokes.
A nu-metal inspired syncopated section that is intercut with some double-time alternate picking sections.
Level 5: Breakdown
Download the tab & notation for this muted rock rhythm guitar lesson
There’s a lot going on in this example, but it’s meant to open the door for you to explore beyond this course and to show you how diverse and varied things can get when you are coming up with parts that employ muted rhythms.
One of the most useful techniques I address here is how I let the notes on the 4th and 5th strings ring while I mute the 6th string. This is a whole lesson unto itself.
Take each section in turn and slow this down if you have to. The course progresses from example to example so if you haven’t really mastered some of the stuff from the earlier lessons you may need to hone your chops a bit before the double time picking comes together at the tempo in this piece.
Enjoying these free muted rock rhythm guitar lessons? Check out Take 5: Muted Rock Rhythm.