Add Great Interest to your Rhythm Playing by Picking Chords
Great guitarists add texture to their playing with both left and right hand techniques. We’ve already learned how to color your rhythm playing with variations of your strumming technique. Picking techniques can also help you create diverse sounds by isolating notes. Remember how playing arpeggios helped us learn chords? To refresh your memory, an arpeggio is to quickly play the notes of a chord, one note after another. The lead guitar section covers arpeggios in more detail, so we’ll begin with an overview here, and try a few simple exercises. Some great songs are built on using arpeggios – listen to ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica, or ‘House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals. You can use either a pick or your fingers. I’ll use a pick for the examples, and I recommend you start out using one too.
Pick the notes of this simple Em chord
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Notice how I skipped the 5th string and created a pattern? It adds greater interest than playing straight through all the strings in order. Take it slowly and steadily, and listen carefully to the audio example to make sure you’re matching the picking pattern.
Try picking the notes of this simple chord progression
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You can use the arpeggio technique on any chord, so experiment with rhythm and note choices to come up with cool and interesting phrasing. Getting comfortable with arpeggios will provide a new dimension to your rhythm playing, but picking through the strings can feel awkward at first. Keep at your practice and soon the notes will start to flow for you.
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