Follow the groove

THIS MONTH, I’D like to talk about the paramount importance of the right, or pick, hand — how it’s the keeper of time and the thing that gives us the groove while we play. I’ll demonstrate some exampl

AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT of playing music is being aware of “where” you’re playing in the beat and how it relates to the groove being laid down by the rhythm section. This concept can be broken up into th

TODAY I'D LIKE to talk about downpicking — picking or strumming consecutive downstrokes — and why it can be so musically effective. This is something I learned from studying the riff-writing style of

IN MY PREVIOUS “Blues You Can Use” columns, I focused on what I consider to be essential rhythm guitar and accompanying single-note patterns that exemplify Chicago-style blues guitar, as heard in the

A BIG PART of blues is playing over a “shuffle” groove — a triplet-driven swing-eighths feel with a backbeat (accents on beats 2 and 4) — at various tempos. There are many great shuffle-based tunes. A

Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks