These videos and audio files are bonus content related to the August 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at the Guitar World Online Store.
Often when jamming, guitarists are required to play rhythm accompaniment for long stretches of time over repeating chord progressions or vamps. This can be tedious and monotonous for the player (as well as the listener), but it doesn’t have to be.
By broadening your rhythm guitar chops in creative and inventive ways, you can play rhythm guitar with as much freedom as you play a solo. The challenge is to come up with guitar parts that are not only rhythmically solid but also melodically interesting.
Which brings us to the subject of this month’s lesson. In my last column, I demonstrated how to utilize modal structures to connect chord voicings up and down the fretboard. I started with an interesting-sounding, unresolved chord, Am13add4, built from stacked fourths—each successive chord tone being a fourth higher than the previous note—as they occur in the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G).
