Feel Good Strumming Riff – Mini Lesson: 010

Helpful Tips

Practice strumming with this fun, feel-good riff inspired by heartland rock artist John Cougar Mellencamp. One of the most fascinating things about this riff is that it uses only two chords! If you’ve watched the performance, you may be scratching your head thinking… “Matt played many different chord shapes.”

But we have to hit pause, and we have to separate chord from shape. The fact is, a chord and a shape are two different things. For example, if you make a G chord and move the shape up a whole step (2 frets), it now becomes an A chord.

So if that blew your mind, check out this lesson for a detailed explanation of how it works. And if you want to dive deeper, jump into our music theory course.

So backtracking to this riff, there are only two chords that are played using different shapes throughout the neck.

Part 1 – Performance & Free Lesson

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