Learn 100 Classic Guitar Riffs Using One Finger

Anyone who claims they’ve never dreamed of being a rock star is either a philistine or a liar. They are the closest thing to living gods we have: especially in the heady, hairy ’70s era. Unfortunately, most of us never progress beyond music/rhythm video games or air-guitar gyrations in the bedroom.

This is where the 100 Riffs video series comes in: it explains how to play no less than 100 classic guitar riffs – from Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water to ACDC’s TNT. Best of all, there are options for one finger, open chord, power chord and barre chord players, which means novices and advanced players are equally well catered for.

Pat David is an Australian teacher and musician who has been creating guitar lessons on YouTube for the past eight years. His magnum opus is the colossal 100 Riffs video that runs for an astounding 3+ hours. As its name implies, the video demonstrates how to play 100 short, repeated melodies from popular music that most people will instantly recognise.

“The idea behind this series is to show that anyone can simply pick up a guitar and start playing songs by their heroes,” David explained to Lifehacker.

“Within each video is the simplest way to play each riff, an intermediate and an advanced method so that guitarists of all skill levels can learn their favourite songs quickly.”

If you’ve spent the past decade tunelessly plucking a few strings on that guitar your parents bought you, this video is an excellent way to ‘git gud’. You can jump to specific riffs in the video by clicking on the provided links in the YouTube comments section.

Budding musos can also download a PDF book containing instructions for each riff, available here.