Billy Jean Riff

Pickup ‘n’ Play:

Table of Contents

In this weekly series of videos I want to share with you some awe-inspiring, non time-consuming riffs, melodic exercises and quirky takes on famous guitar parts, that will make you want to pick your guitar, cement your skills, and increase your thirst and desire to learn more!

Billy Jean Riff (Michael Jackson)

Playing the bass line interspersed with the verse chords, creates a great exercise where you can switch from a fluid set of notes to a simple chord progression (F#m, Abm and A).

The bass riff has a kind of “walking” feel to it and, whilst easy to play, it will require a good level of concentration to play it accurately over and over again. Once you have mastered this, try muting the strings with your picking hand to give the whole thing a different feel. You can also do something similar with the chords by muting them and executing a rhythm pattern between playing the chords in full.