Breakthrough Blues-Rock Rhythm Fills

Advanced Rhythm Fills and Embellishments for Blues-Rock Guitarists

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Jeff McErlain

Educator

blues, blues-rock, rock

Genres

About this course

Some of the greatest blues-rock guitar players are also some of the greatest rhythm players. Jimi Hendrix, Steve Cropper, Keith Richards, and Jimmy Page are all prime examples. To be a complete guitarist you need to be able to blur the lines between rhythm and lead by using fills that outline the changes. Jeff McErlain’s Breakthrough Blues-Rock Rhythm Fills delivers ‘breakthrough’ approaches and techniques for taking your own rhythm chops way beyond the next level.

”As guitarists, we all reach a plateau in our rhythm playing at some point. A big breakthrough for me was when I started utilizing some of my lead guitar concepts to create simple rhythm embellishments instead of full chords. It made my guitar playing a lot more interesting - and fun! In this course, I’ll share a number of simple concepts to help you breakthrough and expand your playing with a variety of essential rhythm fills.”

Jeff kicks off the course with an insightful primer covering must-know rhythm approaches like using double stops, triads, sus and add9 chords, and how to replace or embellish chords by using fills from the major and minor pentatonic scales.

Jeff will then guide you through 10 blues-rock rhythm studies across a variety of keys and feels, each of which highlights an essential flavor of the Blues-Rock lexicon. Jeff will perform each study over a backing track and then break it down emphasizing the key techniques and approaches in play.

Jeff will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the key examples and performances. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tool to sync the tab and notation to the video and can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace. All the backing tracks are included to work with on your own as well.

Grab your guitar and let’s ignite our rhythm chops with Jeff McErlain!

Jeff McErlain's Preferred Gear

Below is a list of Jeff McErlain's preferred gear including guitars, amps, pedals, accessories, and more. What you see in Jeff's lessons may or may not be this actual gear, but if you are trying to capture Jeff's sound and tone, the gear listed below is recommended by Jeff and it's a great place to start!

Guitars

Amps

Pedals

Accessories & More

What you'll learn

Execute thumb-over-neck technique to fret bass notes while playing lead fills
Use modal interchange in a rock context without changing the overall feel
Create ambiguous minor/dominant blues tonality
Mute unwanted strings effectively while using thumb fretting
Maintain steady right-hand rhythm while executing complex left-hand techniques

Release date: 09/19/2019 • 1h 54m runtime

intermediate late intermediate advanced guitar electric guitar rhythm

Start Course

Sample lessons

Thumbs Up!

Overview

Thumbs Up!

Performance

Thumbs Up!

Breakdown

Mary's Wind

Overview

Thumbs Up!

Overview

Thumbs Up!

Performance

Thumbs Up!

Breakdown

Mary's Wind

Overview

What's included

33 lessons • 11 charts • 10 Jam Tracks

Breakthrough | Blues-Rock Rhythm Fills

Hi, I'm Jeff McErlain and welcome to Breakthrough | Blues-Rock Rhythm Fills!

As guitarists, we all reach a plateau in our rhythm playing at some point. A big breakthrough for me was when I started utilizing some of my lead guitar concepts to create simple rhythm embellishments instead of full chords. It made my guitar playing a lot more interesting - and fun!

In this course, I'll share a number of simple concepts to help you breakthrough and expand your playing with a variety of essential rhythm fills.

We'll start the course with a quick primer covering must-know rhythm approaches like using double stops, triads, sus and add9 chords, and how to replace or embellish chords by using fills from the major and minor pentatonic scales. Then, I'll guide you through ten blues-rock rhythm studies across a variety of keys and feels, each of which highlights an essential flavor of the blues-rock lexicon.

All of the performance studies are tabbed and notated and you'll have the jam tracks to work with on your own. You can loop and slow down the videos so you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let's get started!

Rhythm Fill Breakthroughs

I find rhythm guitar playing as satisfying to play as lead guitar, but that wasn't always the case. The turning point for me was seeing that the line between the two is not that great. When I stopped thinking in terms of chords as my standard barre chord fingerings and started seeing the triads within the scales surrounding them everything changed. The main guy for me on this, and many guitar players, was Jimi Hendrix. I HIGHLY recommend learning "Little Wing" and "Wind Cries Mary" after running through this course. I'll provide you with the where's and why's all of this works so when you look as a classic song like those, you'll know what's going on.

Get What You Want

In this example, I'm going to take a look at a simple two chord vamp similar to that of The Rolling Stones "You Can't Always Get What You Want". If you're interested in learning how to solo over this particular vamp, please check out my Essentials: Chord Tone Soloing course here at TrueFire. I choose a simple vamp to start us off easily to see how we can use triads and inversions to create a more interesting rhythm guitar part.

Get What You Want

The chord progression is just C to F, that's a I to IV in C major. Certain keys lend themselves to using the open strings more easily than others. The key of C is one of them as I demonstrate in the first four bars of this progression. I'm simply using triads and basic chords shapes mixed in with the major scale in the same position as my chords. An excellent exercise is to play a C major scale in the open position and see how your F chord and C major chords are contained with in that scale. Then, use what I am doing with those open chords and experiment with mixing in scale tones.

Get What You Want

Throughout this course, you'll see many of the fills and embellishments I'm doing are based upon using a suspended second or suspended fourth.

Let me explain what that is first: a major triad this built using the root, third and fifth. In a suspended second chord, we replace the third with the second of the scale, then usually resolve back to the major triad. C major is spelled CEG, Csus2 is spelled CDG. A suspended fourth chord is spelled root, fourth and fifth.

As you can hear, both of these suspended cords really want to resolve back to the major triad. Keep this in mind as we go through this course as we'll see it quite a bit.

Sunshine

This one uses the classic chord progression to "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" by Bill Withers. It's a staple in cover bands and has been remade many times including a great version by Sting. It's a nice example of how we can use some nice rhythm fills to make for a much more interesting guitar part.

Sunshine

Well, as you can see my playing is very sparse on this. Sometimes in guitar courses like this I feel obligated to show something flashy, but that would be the last thing I would do on a song like this. That would also be the first thing I could do to get me fired on a gig! Providing space for the vocalist in other instrumentation is essential to being a good rhythm guitar player. Also, if I provide a lot of space particularly in the beginning of the song, or in the verses, it gives me plenty of room to build by using more dynamics, or playing more. This will build the excitement in the song which it is it's all about! The old cliché is KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid!

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Reviews

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Aton1

Verified buyer

06/21/26

break through, literally

I basically love all of Jeff McErlain's courses! He comes across as very pleasant, is a gifted teacher, and I soak up every tip he gives. I always look forward to the next part of the course—it just makes life better.

steve d.

Verified buyer

01/18/26

Great lesson

Very good and clear breakdown of all the exercises presented

Stevethewebb

Verified buyer

07/28/25

Blues Break Through

In my experience anything that Jeff produces for education is easily understood and extremely practical. Thanks Jeff!

Homegrowner

Verified buyer