One of the trickiest things for guitar players — especially once you’re past the beginner stage — is piecing rhythm and lead together into one cohesive guitar part. Playing chords is one thing. Playing riffs is another. But blending them so it sounds like one fluid piece? That’s where most people get stuck.
This lesson tackles that head-on. It’s straight out of my Rhythm Riffs of Early Rock and Roll course, and it’s very Chuck Berry influenced. We’re going to combine the classic boogie-woogie shuffle pattern with a riff from the A pentatonic minor scale, and play them together over a standard 12-bar progression.
The Boogie-Woogie Shuffle Pattern
You’ve probably seen this movement before — it goes by different names depending on who taught you. Boogie-woogie, shuffle, whatever you want to call it. It’s an interval using the root and the perfect fifth (like a power chord), and then you add the major sixth with your pinky.
The rhythm is straight down-up strokes: one-and-two-and-three-and-four. Keep the strokes even and catch both strings each time.
The trick is muting. Your fingers lay across the other strings, but only the two you’re playing actually sound out. Everything else gets dampened. For the A chord, you’re on the sixth and fifth strings. For D, move to the fifth and fourth. For E, up two frets higher than D.
Adding the Riff
The riff comes right out of the A pentatonic minor scale. You’re using two strings with your first finger and pinky, and sliding up. It’s a random slide — meaning the note you’re sliding from doesn’t matter much. What matters is the note you land on.
If you’re struggling with slides, try starting from the third fret as a reference point. But really, the destination is what counts, not the departure.
The riff is all down-up picked. You pick, you slide, and you hold those strings down firmly to keep everything ringing clear. The whole thing fits into one bar of music.
Putting It Together: The 12-Bar
Here’s the structure: one bar of the shuffle pattern, then one bar of the riff. That’s your two-bar phrase. Now run it through a standard 12-bar blues:
Four bars of A (two cycles of shuffle-then-riff), two bars of D, two bars of A, one bar of E, one bar of D, and two bars of A.
You can also flip it — start with the riff for the first bar, then play the rhythm. That’s up to you. Be creative with it.
And once you’ve got it in A, try moving the whole thing to G or B. Just shift everything up or down a whole step. Same idea, different key.
This is part 1 of 2. In part 2, I’ll show you a second riff variation and how to put together a proper ending.
For more lessons like this, check out the guitar riffs page.
Have fun with that one. You can spend quite a bit of time exploring different combinations. If you want the full course, it’s at riffninja.com. See you later.
