The boogie riff is one of those patterns you’ll hear everywhere once you know what to listen for. Blues, rock and roll, country. It’s in all of it. And the best part? It’s based on just two notes moving back and forth. You don’t need to be a shredder to sound good with this one.

Colin walks you through the open position boogie riff and shows you how to put it together in a 12-bar blues:

How the Boogie Riff Works

Start with the power chord. That’s your root note and the fifth above it. If you’re on the low E string, you’ve got open E as your root and the 2nd fret on the A string as your fifth. That’s the foundation of the whole riff.

Now add the sixth, on the 4th fret of the A string. You just go back and forth between the fifth and the sixth while the open string provides your bass note underneath. Two notes, one bass note, and you’ve got a riff that sounds like a full band.

Colin puts it well: it’s a two-note movement. Down picks, down-up picks, however you want to pick it, it works. The pattern is the same either way.

Three Open Positions

In open position, you can play this riff on three different string pairs:

For E: use the open 6th string as your root, with the fifth and sixth on the 5th string (2nd and 4th frets).

For A: use the open 5th string as your root, with the fifth and sixth on the 4th string (2nd and 4th frets).

For D: use the open 4th string as your root, with the fifth and sixth on the 3rd string (2nd and 4th frets).

Same shape, three string pairs. The root is always your open string in these positions. That makes them nice and easy to grab.

Watch Your Right Hand

One thing Colin stresses: make sure you’re only hitting the two strings you need. The root note and its harmony, nothing else should be ringing out. If other strings are sounding, it gets muddy fast.

This is especially important when you start moving between string pairs during a song. Your picking hand has to know which two strings to aim for without thinking about it. That comes with practice.

Playing a 12-Bar Blues

Colin puts all three positions together to play a 12-bar blues in A. The A riff is your one chord, D is your four chord, and E is your five chord. Once you can switch between them smoothly, you’ve got a complete song.

Start slow. Count the bars. The 12-bar form is: four bars of A, two bars of D, two bars of A, then E, D, and back to A for the last four bars. There are variations, but that’s the basic shape.

If you want to go deeper with blues rhythm guitar patterns, the boogie riff is a great starting point. And if you’re ready for more classic riff patterns like this, check out Rhythms & Riffs of Early Rock & Roll for the foundational patterns that started it all.

Once you’ve got this pattern down, try the boogie shuffle guitar lesson which adds the flat seventh for more combinations, or check out the acoustic blues guitar boogie for a complete key-of-A walkthrough.

Happy boogie shuffling. Have a good one.