Rhythm Guitar 365 – Daily Exercises for Rhythm Guitar Technique Chord Theory Strumming Fingerpicking and Progressions with Online Audio Hal Leonard Guitar Method

by Troy Nelson

This book provides 365 exercises – one for every day of the year! – to keep your rhythm chops fine tuned. Demos of all 365 exercises are provided online. The book covers chord theory and the fundamentals of rhythm; basic and complex fingerpicking and strum patterns; popular diatonic and non-diatonic progressions; major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads; major, minor, and dominant seventh chords; extended and altered chords; major and minor keys; and more. By practicing these you'll gain greater knowledge of chord construction and progressions, exposure to the rhythm styles of several musical genres, improved fingerpicking and strumming technique, increased chord-voicing vocabulary, and more!

Genres: Music

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2014

About the author

If there’s one thing certain about Troy Nelson—a life-long guitar player and author of top-selling instructional books Guitar Aerobics, Fretboard Freedom, and Rhythm Guitar 365—it’s that he knows how to keep busy.

Born in the small town of Viroqua, Wisconsin (population 4,000), Nelson picked up the guitar at the age 14, after months of begging his parents for an axe. He tapped into his savings account for a Harmony electric, a Fender Strat knockoff from the JC Penney catalogue.

From that moment forward, Nelson would spend hours each day, much to his buddies’ dismay, woodshedding in his bedroom, playing everything from Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King to Dokken and Metallica.

“My friends would come to our front door on the weekends to ask me to hang out, and I’d say ‘no thanks’ and go back to my room to play guitar until dinner. Then, after dinner, I’d return to my room and play until my sister would bang on the wall to make me stop,” remembers Nelson.

When he wasn’t playing guitar, Nelson was the star quarterback of his high school football team. Though he received letters to play football from several of the state universities, Nelson chose music instead, attending Milwaukee Area Technical College, where he earned an Associate’s Degree in Occupational Music.

Following graduation, Nelson spent several years as a freelance editor for Hal Leonard Corporation, the world’s largest music print publisher, where he transcribed and edited many of the top guitar songs of the day. In 1995, jumped at the chance to work on a new magazine Hal Leonard was launching, Guitar One.

In 1999, Nelson moved with the magazine to New York City. For a decade, he worked tirelessly at the magazine, holding the titles of Music Editor, Senior Editor, and, finally, Editor-in-Chief.
“I’m quite proud of what we accomplished at Guitar One. What began as a start-up, evolved into the No. 2 guitar title in the world when I left in 2005,” remembers Nelson fondly.

After a decade of success in the music business, Nelson decided to pursue a career in his other love—football. After a stint in the media department of the New York Jets, Nelson headed south, to the University of Georgia, where received a Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Management in 2009, graduating with top honors (summa cum laude). While attending UGA, Nelson somehow found time to write his first book, Guitar Aerobics, which has become a #1 bestseller, with nearly 100,000 copies sold to date.

“As a guitarist, I wanted to write a technique book that would appeal to me; that is, a book that had a practical structure and music examples that didn’t sound like warm-up exercises. I wanted to compose music examples that guitarists could incorporate into their own music while, at the same time, improving their chops,” says Nelson.

After UGA, Nelson went on to work for several football entities, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the All-American Football League, Gardner Webb University, and BLESTO, a football scouting coop owned by seven NFL teams. It was during his time at BLESTO that Nelson had another book idea. The result was Fretboard Freedom, a book Nelson authored after work and on the weekends. Fretboard Freedom is a novel approach to visualizing and navigating the neck of the guitar—a concept that initially struck Nelson while he wrote Guitar Aerobics back in 2007.

Although life as a football scout was difficult to put on hold, music eventually pulled Nelson back into its clutches. He took a breather from other career pursuits and spent the better portion of 2012 authoring Rhythm Guitar 365 (Hal Leonard), the follow-up to Guitar Aerobics and Fretboard Freedom.

“Like my other books, Rhythm Guitar 365 contains daily music exercises—one for every day of the year—with this book focusing on rhythm-guitar playing, which doesn’t get nearly the attention that lead playing does,” says Nelson of his latest title.

Nelson currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with hi

Reviews

[briz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reviewing this now, even though I haven't finished it. But I wanted to jot down some notes since, gah, this is SUCH THE PERFECT BOOK and what I was looking for! For the record (since I may update this review as I progress through the book), I just completed the Week 1 exercises and I'm rating this 5/5 stars (or should I say 5/5 STRUMS?! ho ho ho). YES, 2% THROUGH AND I'M ALREADY 5/5 HAPPY.

So I learned to play guitar in high school and used to be super passionate about it: I played hours and hours every day, I was in the guitar ensemble and a bunch of theater orchestras (community and school), I performed solo compositions during talent show and shit like that. I had big sparkly (but vague) dreams of becoming a, ahem, Master Guitarist, in the style of... John McLaughlin? I dunno. Anyway, then college happened and then life happened and then that dream died. How very sad.

This past month, I busted out my dusty-yet-still-beloved guitars, since I finally had (a) the space to play them and (b) an amp again. YAAAAASSSSS.

BUT. Butt. My knowledge has grown Swiss cheese-like with many years passing. I had my open and bar vanilla chords down, I remembered like one single jazzy chord, I half-remembered parts of a couple scales, and my strumming rhythm was just basically terrible. I needed some STRUCTURE and GUIDANCE. How to find it?! Where to begin again!?! I knew I wanted to fill all these gaps: chords (which I could remind myself through accumulating songs to play), scales (exercise book?), rhythm (exercise book?), and - ideally - some music theory (watching random explainer videos and that one scene from Whiplash?!). I debated getting an instructor, or joining the local music school - but, man, I ain't got time (or budget!) for either of those, really. Also, the guitar playing world seemed to have gotten so chattery with online (charlatans?) guitar instruction websites and Reddits and YouTube tutorials!? WHAT TO DO?!

ENTER THIS BOOK. I actually got a bunch of guitary books for Xmas, all in the service of this de-cheese mission, and I've futzed with several of them. BUT THIS BOOK. OH MAN. It has been the best. IT IS WHAT I SEEK. IT IS WHAT YOU SEEK, GUITARIST OF INDETERMINATE SKILL AND BACKGROUND. Because it really is super handy.

I thought it was just going to be strumming exercises, but it's so much more! First, as an intro chapter, we get a deep end dive into music theory. Honestly, most of this went over my head. I mean, I get that chords are made up of (mathematical?) combos of notes. And... uh... you can make chords in lots of different ways. Then, every week, we get a chord progression for the week. Week 2 is I-IV-V-I, key of A major, which translates to A-D-E-A. Then, every day of said week, you play that chord progression in a variety of styles: funk, jazz, country, folk, classical, metal (!?!). So many ways to skin a cat! Along the way, you learn about rhythm (I shake my fist at you, R&B!!!), but also - again - theory (since you're playing the chords in a bunch of pretzel configurations up and down the neck - I shake my fist at YOU, jazz!!) and ample picking as well (classical guitar, what a pain also!). You're giving both your left-hand AND right-hand fingers an excellent workout, AND your rhythm brain. I didn't think I'd enjoy essentially rote exercises so much but... it's VERY ENJOYABLE? You can practice practice practice and each exercise gets a bit easier. Some (R&B!!!) remain challenging, but that's even better: you're working on your weak spots! And it really is enlightening to see, again, how very many ways one can skin a cat.

Oh yes! Forgot to mention, but a KEY thing is that the book comes with some audio files you can download from the Hal Leonard (who is that guy anyway) website. That is KEY KEY KEY. Having those files on-hand, playing along with them, listening to them first, man, it's like having your personal guitar teacher patiently replaying it to you again and again. For the challenging exercises, I slow it down to 0.5x or 0.75x speed and stumble along. It's awesome.

I'm pumped. I can't recommend this highly enough. I don't know if it'd be good for someone who's just starting out as a guitarist - like, I might focus on having a bit of fun then and just learning a bunch of songs and building up your fretboard calluses. But if you want a comprehensive/holistic approach to the entire beautiful instrument, this book has just been awesome.

(Putting this on my did-not-finish shelf since I don't want to have it lingering in my currently-reading shelf for YEARS, which is how long it would take to legitimately get through all of it.)

[Matt Sell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for developing rhythm guitar, but comes with a steep learning curve.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Exercises everyday for a year.