Preston Reed: How to play percussive acoustic guitar

A video and tab lesson with New York's finest

Total Guitar (Preston Reed/Richard Barrett), Fri 30 Oct 2009, 3:26 pm GMT

Preston's first improvised piece for us demonstrates how he adds chords to a simple bass and snare drum style groove.

He establishes this basic groove in the first four bars and keeps it running as the piece becomes more complex. Preston adds some offbeat percussive strikes to his groove in bar 5 (played over the neck with his fret hand) but follow the bass and snare groove to help you keep in time.

At the end of bar 8, Preston adds a chordal pull-off/hammer-on idea. It's tricky to fit these chords into the groove so listen out for the initial percussion groove.

Finally, Preston's tuning from low to high is CGDGGD. This means the second and third strings are in unison with each other. They're exactly the same pitch! Preston detunes a further semitone too, but we've notated this in C for your convenience. You could even just play in drop D because all the notes are on the fifth and sixth strings, tuned a 5th apart.