In this American Idiot guitar lesson, we’re going to be learning how to play this epic guitar riff and high energy chorus by Green Day! Step on your overdrive pedal, and let’s dive in.
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Franco Lacan
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This early 2000s punk anthem is such a fun song to play on the guitar!I remember learning this riff early - maybe too early! - in my guitar journey, and I still love playing it to this day. With quick transitions and a high-energy strumming pattern, it's a perfect song to put your power chords into practice.
American Idiot Riff
Let’s start with the strumming pattern! As always, to avoid feeling overwhelmed, the best thing to do is to focus your efforts on one thing at a time. I’d suggest spending some time practicing the strumming pattern below with muted strums first.
Basically, just rest your fretting hand on the strings so they’re all muted, and play the strumming pattern as if you were playing chords!
Try to do that with the metronome, to the point where you can "sing" the strumming pattern. That's when you know you've got it!
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When practicing new and challenging patterns, always start with muted strums so you can put all your focus on the strumming hand.
Franco Lacan
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The main riff of the song is played over two bars (two times four beats), and the strumming pattern looks like this:
We’re going to need a total of three powerchords to play the riff. We'll have to play a G#5, C#5 and F#5.
Want to learn about powerchords?
The riff is played with power chords, if you don’t know what they are check out our Electric Beginners course Level 2
As we are strumming hard, we can't aim for specific strings too precisely.
Try your best to mute the strings that we aren't being fretted when playing powerchords.
Here's how I do it: When playing a power chord where the root note is on the E string (like the G#5 here), I just rest my index finger on the strings I don't want to hear.
Make sure you're not pressing down on them too hard, or you'll end up playing a barre chord!
When playing a power chord where the root note is on the A string (like C#5 here), I do the same thing, but I also tend to rest my middle finger on the E string to mute it. You can also try slightly touching that low E string with your index finger.
This can take a bit of time, but a song like this a great way to practice that.
Let’s move onto the fun part! If your strumming pattern feels solid, start adding the shapes we’ve just gone over:
As you can see, we strum open strings to add colour to our transitions between chords.
That’s good news, because that means you’ve got more time to go from one chord to the other with your fretting hand!
The trick is to move your fretting hand onto the next hand position, as you're playing the open strings.
Little details
To jump onto the main riff, you might hear a little pickup chord! That chord appears after the long drum fill in the verse.
Here, you have two options. You can either play open strings (like we did for the main riff) or you can play an F#5.
As long as you do that on beat 4, you’ll sound great!
When everything’s working, and you can land on the right chord on the right subdivisions, the next step is to start getting things up to speed. It’s important to do this step by step, and make sure that you’re not tensing up. Keep your wrist loose!
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When trying to get up to speed on a new song, it's important to make sure that you're not tensing up and that you're not changing the pattern or the chord shapes to accommodate the new speed
Franco Lacan
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The chorus
Let's now have a look at the chorus of the song.
The structure is fairly simple, we're going to stay on each shape for two bars, and we're going to apply the same strumming pattern to each chord we're playing. We only need one new chord: Eb5.
Since this is just another powerchord, try to see if you can figure out how to play it by yourself.
And just in case you're not sure, here it is:
The structure looks like this:
Be careful because we're not playing on the last two bars of the chorus - that space is needed for the epic drum fill!
A common mistake people make is to see empty bars as something we can just skip. But it's not! Other instruments might be playing something, and we don't want to change the structure of the song.
Make sure you're still counting this space properly.
Stay in the groove of the song by keeping your strumming hand moving if you can.
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When you're not actively playing a section of a song and you need to leave space, make sure you're still moving and counting along with the beats. That's the best way to follow the structure so you can jump in at the right pace and at the right time!
Franco Lacan
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The strumming pattern for the chorus looks like this:
Here, it's all about the energy, strum hard and have fun with it!
As we mentioned before, start by playing the pattern with muted strums to get comfortable.
In conclusion
This fantastic song is a chance for you to have fun playing something truly fun and exciting, while also helping you practice your powerchords and your rhythm.
Take your time, count along as much as you can, and make sure all these powerchords sound solid!
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