Rhythm Riffs: Over 200 Riffs in All Styles Hal Leonard Guitar Method
July 21, 2010 in Local Music by stagemaster
- 48 Pages
- Published by HL
- Softcover with CD
Product Description
Are you tired of playing the same riffs over and over again? Or maybe you just don’t know what to play during your solo? Rhythm Riffs gives you the tools to increase your improvising vocabulary. This book/CD pack covers rock, blues, jazz, country, and “outside” styles. It gives you major, minor and dominant 7th riffs (12 of each!) plus a special “exotic” section. You’ll have a riff for nearly any musical situation. The CD includes each riff played at full speed and … More >>
Rhythm Riffs: Over 200 Riffs in All Styles Hal Leonard Guitar Method
Related Products:
This book is definitely worth 10 bucks. Greg Koch is awesome guitar player. Chops included in a book are really great! However this book would be perfect if guitar parts were recorded with drums and bass.
Rating: 4 / 5
..thinking it is something that would teach in a systematic way.
This book is for well skilled in guitar method’s players who want to experiment and select certain variety riffs planted at specific chords. Some riffs are for acoustic some for electric guitars. I found that Introduction is rather short, hasty and casual. I still try to understand what these dots below the notes are for, and what is notation “w/dist”? Special Techniques explaining is superficial as well. In general “Over 200 Riffs” is like sort of math book where you will find formulas and equations but without examples how and where to use it. It is just a SUPPLEMENT (as indicated on the front cover) that you keep and use as needed. Saying this, I am not going to give up on it. Time will come (hopefully) that I will get back to it and start using to bring flavor to my performances. As for rating, since I tried only few riffs and only for a short spell, 4 stars are rather based on opinions expressed by more skilled customers who purchased it.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is not a guitar method since it expects you to have a certain amount of intermediate knowledge. The point is to be able to play a riff over a chord in five different styles, it has riffs over major, minor and dominant seven chords, at the end of the book it has a few 12 bar progressions to show how a riff might interact over a chord progression.
If you just want to play the riffs and, eventually, be able to play them over chord progressions then this book is a very good choice but, to me, it has a “added value” that, unfortunately, the author somehow miss and don’t go deeper (that’s why I haven’t gave it five stars): If you take your time and study the riffs upon the corresponding scale, chord and arpeggio, your understanding of the harmony involved will improve a lot your playing, althought this way of learning is a bit hard and very slow, you will become a much better guitar player.
One more thing, pay attention to the CD and listen carefully, the author is a great guitarrist, just the CD worths the ten bucks this book cost.
For ten dollars, it’s a very good deal, I do recommend this book but also, it needs a completion, try Don Latarski’s Book Arpeggios for Guitar, wich consist of a list of arpeggios with the corresponding scale and chord.
Rating: 4 / 5
Greg Koch has developed an artful approach to those who find themselves playing the same old, same old. The CD is an excellent tool and the book’s format makes it easy to follow. As an old rock player, I was surprised how many of the jazz riffs were of interest and help in my everyday play — a few minutes here and there spent honing new skills and sounds. I’ve never had much luck with self-instruction books, videos, or DVDs, but this one’s different and well worth the reasonable cost involved.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s a neat one, only $10, so it’s a great deal.
Let’s start out with the not-so-good: The CD recording is one of those that just plays the licks, fast, then slow, so it’s definitely not anything you can put in the CD player. There is no accompaniment, so you’re going to need to supply your own backing tracks or band-mates if you want to use these licks in any kind of musical situation. Also, a lot of the licks don’t really loop very well, so if you wanted to have a cool riff that you could use as the verse of a song, or something like that, you are going to need to modify the last measure of about every lick (he has a nasty habit of ending with whole notes, or other large valued notes, which kills the forward motion of the music, and sounds more like a little “ditty” that you would hear at the end of a commercial or something like that).
So… why am I giving it 5 stars? Because it’s awesome. A lot of the licks are really cool, and most of them are very unique (very little cookie-cutter stuff in here). Every guitar player who picks this up will find a lot of interesting things in here. And then, if you decide to analyze it, you will find out a lot about chord shapes, root shapes, scales and how they relate to chords, etc. Also, the licks are often very difficult. Plain and simple, this book has a lot of heart, and is a great deal of content for the price. It’s very good rhythm practice for any guitarist, and in focusing on rhythm chops, it’s going to make the players who learn from this book into very awesome players! There’s so many books with lead guitar licks, this one is great because it’s got inventive rhythm ideas, and I reccomend it whole-heartedly.
Daniel Page, Guitar Instruction
Rating: 5 / 5