Rhythm Guitar Sound Effects 

There are sounds that the electric can make that don't sound like a guitar at all.

You may have heard these sounds in your favorite songs…

You may not have realized that these sounds are made with a guitar…

These sounds aren't hard to make with an electric guitar…

They are a cool way to have fun and make your rhythms sound interesting…

Starting with the basics, something that almost everybody probably does, once they get an electric guitar and an amplifier with distortion is the pick slide. Take the edge of your pick, put it on the strings, and slide it. Now, it's nothing that special, but one thing to notice is that depending upon the angle of your pick, you may get different sounds. It also depends on the thickness of your pick. If you listen, you'll hear a difference between the sounds of the pick slide where your pick is perpendicular to the string or when you angle it slightly. When you angle it just a bit, it seems to be a little more aggressive sounding, and you can hear the pick's edge rolling over the string's windings. You can try it fast or slow. The two angles sound different, and depending on what kind of effect you want, you can choose either method.

Another cool thing you can do is slide our fretting hand up or down the neck, going into a chord. When we combine that with a pick slide, it can sound cool. We could do the pick-and-hand slides multiple times before we get to whatever chord we're playing.

Then there is behind the nut bends. What I'm talking about only applies if you don't have a locking nut. You can bend the strings behind your nut. Play an open string note and press the string between your nut and your guitar tuners towards the headstock. You could also play a fretted note; you have to come over with your picking hand while your fretting hand remains in the string. You can do it with chords or single notes. You can even start a note bent and slowly release it.

In addition to doing the behind-the-nut bends, you can take your pick, again, as long as you don't have a locking nut, and you can strum the strings between the nut and the tuners. You'll get a pinging sound that sounds like the intro to Running with the Devil by Van Halen. You can also do it between your saddles and your bridge if you have a Gibson-style bridge.

Something else you may want to try is volume swells. You do this by hammering on a note on your guitar or strumming a chord with your volume off, then turn up your volume knob immediately afterward. Then turn the volume down before you play again. It sounds good with a little bit of delay.

This next thing we will discuss requires a little bit of accuracy but is not totally impossible. You might be aware of harmonics on the guitar. Open string harmonics are typically harmonics that people learn first, but there are things called tap harmonics. It's not finger tapping, but you're going to tap the string in a specific location on the neck, and you're going to create a harmonic. You need to tap the string 12 frets higher than the fretted note you are playing. For example, If you put your finger on the third fret of your lowest string, play that note, and then tap the 15th fret of the same string just lightly, you'll get a harmonic.

We can take the same idea and apply it to chords. If you were to be playing a power chord on the 5th fret with your first finger on the 5th fret of the A string, your ring finger on the 7th fret of the D string, and your pinky on the 7th fret of the G string. You can take any one of those notes that you are playing in the chord and tap your 12 frets higher on the same string. Root notes are hard to hear, but the harmonics ring clearly on the other two strings. 

You could use any combinations you want that we discussed. You could do a volume swell with a behind the nut bend. You can also try combining the pick and hand slides in between chord changes. What if you tried to do some tap harmonics on a chord and then a behind-the-nut rake. Any combination of these will sound great. 

If you are looking to learn another excellent rhythm guitar skill, you can check out my FREE lesson on how to weave lead guitar melody lines to your rhythm guitar playing here: https://rhythmguitarlessons.net/Pro

Have you ever heard extra notes played between chords and wondered, "Why do THESE notes sound good?" or, "How can I do that?".

Most guitar players struggle to find the right notes to play between chords to make their songs sound better.

The fact is, it's easy to do once you learn how. And the result is your guitar playing sounds much more complex than it is...

This is good news for you:

I've created a brand new eGuide (yes, it's free), where I show you an easy way to connect chords with single-note melodies to sound like a pro.

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About Mark Turko: Mark Turko is a professional guitar player and instructor with over 30 years of experience and teaches guitar lessons online.

About Mark Turko: Mark Turko is a professional guitar player and instructor with over 30 years of experience and teaches guitar lessons online.