Write an article based on this "Push yourself past your most common strumming patterns. Practice daily with a metronome, percussionist, or both. Learn to dampen bum notes to clean up your chords. Teach yourself 1-2 new chords a week. Use capos to place difficult-to-sing songs into your vocal range. Learn the value of groove by paying close attention to bass and drum techniques. Use dynamics, or volume control, to create unique and captivating rhythm parts. Experiment with alternate tunings."

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If you've been playing guitar for any period of time, you'll likely start to notice that you naturally fall into the same strumming patterns each time you play or write a song. The best way to avoid this is to try and duplicate strumming patterns from your favorite artists, pushing yourself to widen your rhythmic tool belt.  Can you mix some single notes into your strumming? For example, a very country-western technique is to pick the root note, then strum the chord separately right afterwards. Remember to strum both up and down when playing. How can you use muted strings (by lifting your fingers lightly off the frets) to get a percussive sound in your strumming? Check the Violent Femmes for good examples. A rhythm guitarist, it goes without saying, needs to be able to stay in rhythm. The problem is that a guitarist's primary training is in melody, as drummers generally provide the rhythm for you to follow along to. However -- the ability to stay perfectly and precisely in time separates the amateurs from the pros, as perfect rhythm has an indescribable ability to make people dance.  Spend at least 5-10 minutes a day on a metronome, if not the entire practice session. Always start at a pace where you can play the notes perfectly instead of rushing through. Gradually up the tempo as you get faster. Many metronomes can be set to click off for a few beats, forcing you to stay in time on your own before they come back in. This is a great way to test yourself. Many times, especially with electric guitars and distortion, playing too many notes at once can sound muddled or messy. Many jazz chords require skipping strings in the middle of the chord to sound correct. Great guitarists pull this off but using the pads of their fingers to dampen the strings below the strings they're fretting. For example, the following jazz chord is formed by using the bottom of your middle finger to mute the A string, allowing you to freely strum all six strings without the A sounding out:  |e|----7----| |B|----7----| |G|----7----| |D|----6----| |A|----x----| |E|----7----| Ideally, you want chords that you can play with chords you already know, which helps you practice transitioning from one to the other. Dig deep into every chord you can find, from simple power chords to complex jazz shapes. To effectively learn a chord:  Practice forming the shape from nothing. Take your hand off the guitar, then place it down in the chord shape. Repeat until it feels automatic. Practice getting to the chord from other chord shapes. Play or learn a song with the chord in it. Review your new chords each day until memorized. A capo simply shortens the neck of the guitar, allowing you to play open chords starting at any point. This means you can change the key of a song without actually changing the shape or order of any of your chords, allowing you to play the song in any key you can sing it. Effective capo use is essential for a rhythm guitarist or singer/songwriter. As part of the rhythm section, you are responsible for keeping the song grooving both melodically and rhythmically. If you're in a band, you need to be locked into these other musicians so that you're always in time, hitting each note in unison to give the song power. If you're playing all alone, it's twice as important to get this groove down:  Learn the basics of bass guitar and/or drums to get more in touch with the tempo and timing aspects of rhythm guitar.  Focus on playing every note together as a rhythm section. This perfect synchronicity is the essence of a good groove. When playing alone you have a lot more freedom with rhythm. The best way to "groove" is to know the song so well it's automatic, letting you feel the energy of the song and audience instead of thinking about the next chord. Work on a smooth transition from dead silence to powerful strumming, or picking individual notes in between fuller chords. Your ability to modulate tone and volume is a great way to create tension and release in a song, building drama and energy.  When playing with a band, try to sync up with the drummer. When he takes some volume off, you should too. If playing alone, use volume control to manipulate the energy of the song. Try starting slow, then building up to a triumphant or climactic song. See John Butler's "Oceans" for a good example. New tunings open up new sounds, new chords, and can make certain chords or progressions far easier to play. A good way to start is by learning some famous songs in other tunings -- the Led Zeppelin ("Hey Hey What Can I Do") & Rolling Stones ("You Can't Always Get What You Want") catalogs particularly good places to start. Guitarists Jimmy Page and Kieth Richards both lean heavily on alternate tunings.  Start with open tunings, which are when the guitar hits a chord without holding down any frets. This allows you to play more open notes, giving the whole song a brand new texture. Even dropping your low-E string a half step will give you a slightly richer, deeper tone overall, as seen in Led Zeppelin's "Hey Hey What Can I Do."