Rock & Roll

The Shuffle

This is the staple technique of all budding rock & roll guitar players, and it's simply based on two powerchord shapes. All we need are powerchord shapes based on the E and A strings. These shapes are shown in the fretboard diagrams.

The 12 Bar Blues

A 12 bar blues is a standard structure that a huge number of blues songs adhere to. This structure can vary a little but generally stays the same. For rock & roll, we take a 12 bar blues structure and speed it up to add a sense of urgency. Take a look at the fretboard diagrams for the main elements in understanding a rock & roll structure

The Chords To Use

Use the 1st, 4th and 5th chords of any key. We won't cover the theory behind this right now, all we need to do is work it out practically. Whatever the key (see the fretboard diagrams for an example in the key of A), you find the desired root note on the E string. This gives you the first chord. So, for example, we could make an A powerchord to start. Then, the 4th chord is always the note on the same fret on the A string. The 5th chord is then two frets up from the 4th. So, in the key of A, our three chords of the blues are A, D and E. This can be powerchords, major chords, minor chords or dominant chords.

The Order Of Chord Changes

The 12 bar is so-called because it has twelve bars, as you may have guessed! These 12 bars repeat over and over again. The basic order for rock & roll is shown below; try to get this sequence learnt. Notice also that we use Roman numerals in place of numbers. This means that 'I' is one, 'IV' is four and 'V' is five.

...Which translates to (Using the key of Bb blues)

"Johnny Be Bad"

It's time to play through a full rock & roll track! One of the trickiest parts of playing rock & roll is keeping your energy levels high; your fretting hand will be playing wide stretches for a full four minutes during the track! This is something you may need to build up to if it's too tricky straight away. Please listen and watch the full track, then move on to the next video.

The Verse

The verse and the chorus are essentially the same, as it is the same 12 bar sequence over and over in the song! However, we'll vary the two parts using the rhythm. So, to start with let's look at the 12 bar progression we are using. We are in the key of Bb.

The Rythm

During the verse we are doing exclusively down strums, except we are accenting the beats where we use the little finger. This is shown below. Also, remember that when you change chord you can accent the first hit as a cool little extra if you're feeling confident!

Chorus and Intro

The chorus is identical in structure, but different rhythmically. During the chorus, you are strumming down-up strokes rather than entirely downstroke palm muting. This has the effect of widening the sound and producing a big chorus. The rhythm pattern looks like this:

Chord Chart and Rhythm

As for the song structure, all you need to watch out for are the breaks in the music where you play the single strum. These are laid out here: