50 legendary guitar riffs to take you from being a complete newbie to a killer guitar hero

Led Zeppelin at a concert in Chicago, Illinois by Jim Summaria, licensed under (CC BY-SA 3.0)

When I first started teaching guitar, I quickly realised that if you try to teach students a lot of chord based strumming songs, (which seems like the typical way to teach new students) they would find it difficult and get frustrated. I quickly realised a great way to motivate the student was to teach them riffs – particularly easy, classic riffs.

Update: Since posting this article I have had huge demand for the video lessons to teach you how to play these riffs.

As a guy who is keen to please, over the next few weeks/months I will be posting tutorial videos for all 50 of these riffs, so you can learn every single one of them. To keep updated as to when they are live, you can join the free mailing list here. Oh, and you get a free mini course that will help improve your riffs, songs, and all of your playing.

By teaching my students riffs, I quickly found they were able to play REAL music in a much shorter space of time. They loved playing guitar more, they practiced more, and they got much better, much quicker.

The riffs were easier to play than chords. They were also more fun and as a great bonus they even helped the student to play the chords and improve finger dexterity, so it was a win win situation.

I then devised a list of 10 riffs to teach, they were enjoyed so I extended it to 20, then 30 and so on until I reached a list of 50 fantastic riffs that are great to learn and will take a new guitarist all the way from a complete novice that has never picked up the guitar to a professional sounding intermediate guitar hero who can blow away his or her guitar competition.

There is a big variety of riffs here. Above all, the majority of the riffs are not only recognisable; they are downright awesome riffs too. So here we are…

50 of the best guitar riffs for beginners

1. Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
2. Breaking The Law – Judas Priest
3. Sunshine of Your Love – Cream
4. In My Life – The Beatles
5. Oh, Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison
6. Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure
7. Redemption Song – Bob Marley
8. China Girl – David Bowie
9. Born Under A Bad Sign – Albert King
10. James Bond Theme – John Barry (one of my favourite riffs on acoustic guitar)
11. Daytripper – The Beatles
12. La Bamba – Richie Valens 
13. Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds (one of the best riffs on guitar ever?)
14. Enter Sandman – Metallica
15. Californication – Red Hot Chili Peppers
16. Smoke on the water – Deep Purple
17. Lose Yourself – Eminem
18. Beat It – Michael Jackson
19. Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
20. Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton
21. You Really Got Me – The Kinks
22. Going Underground – The Jam
23. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
24. All the Small Things – Blink 182
25. Since you’ve Been Gone – Rainbow
26. Do I wanna Know? – Artic Monkeys
27. Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music
28. Sex On Fire – Kings Of Leon
29. Black Dog – Led Zeppelin
30. Wanted Dead or Alive – Bon Jovi
31. Everlong – Foo Fighters
32. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
33. Black Sabbath – Iron Man
34. American Idiot – Green Day
35. Van Halen – Ain’t Talking Bout Love
36. Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns N’ Roses 
37. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
38. Whole Lotta Love – Led Zeppelin
39. Alive – Pearl Jam
40. One – U2
41. Are you gonna go my way? – Lenny Kravitz
42. Back In Black – AC/DC
43. Walk This Way – Aerosmith
44. Layla – Eric Clapton/Derek and the Dominoes
45. Smokestack Lightning – Howlin Wolf (one of the greatest blues riffs on guitar, ever!)
46. I See Fire – Ed Sheeran
47. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
48. Muse – Plug In Baby
49. Purple Haze – Jimi Hendrix
50. Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry (simply one of the best classic riffs on gutiar)

Go through this list of the best guitar riffs for beginners in order starting at number one, learn them and check each one off until you can play them all. Believe me, you will saviour the moment when you are able to play number 50 comfortably.

It will take time to learn all these especially if you have never played before. This is a long term project. 6-12 months is an approximate time scale as long as you practice properly.

Blow the socks off your audience

The riffs are great party pieces.

After a few months of playing, a friend or family member will always ask a student what they can play. Instead of them showing their friend or girlfriend a half-hearted (because they can’t play it yet) rendition of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’, they blast through the riffs they have learned competently and confidently and the loved one is usually suitably very impressed.

Don’t underestimate how motivating this.

You will be a much better guitar player for learning these killer riffs

Even if you are an acoustic player, these riffs sound great too. Obviously, if you have an electric with a bit of overdrive or full on distortion they will sound that bit cooler, but many of my students play these on acoustic and love playing them just as much.

One thing I love to do, is challenge my students to play through the entire list of riffs one after the other with only a second or two break, getting all the way from 1 to 50. It’s an awesome challenge and one that takes times and lots of concentration.

This is very beneficial for more experienced players. New players will have to build up to this – just focus on learning one riff at a time!

One other thing – I’m a big fan of students learning songs from start to finish and getting into the habit of doing so. This goes for when learning harder riffs and especially when learning any easy riffs on the guitar.

What I encourage them to do, is learn the whole song for at least ten of these riffs, so they can hear and understand how a song is fully constructed. When it comes to chord based songs, they learn the whole song and nothing less. Ideally, they would do the same with riff-based songs, but that isn’t always the case.

Either way, having 50 awesome riffs under your belt is a brilliant achievement and a great 1-year goal for new players. Learning all these riffs alongside complete songs is wonderfully motivating.

Experienced players love these riffs for guitar too

If you have played for a long time there is no shame in starting a number one. Doing so is a good thing. It will let you know where your progress is at.

By learning all 50 you will learn so much about the art and craft of writing a great guitar riff as well as techniques needed to play a huge variety of skills such as:

• Timing
• Right and left-hand coordination
• Legato
• String Skipping
• Alternate picking
• Feel

And more…

What are the criteria for these 50 legendary guitar riffs?

When creating this list, I decided that:

• The riffs must sound awesome
• The riffs must be recognisable to the majority of guitarists
• The riffs must get progressively harder

A few things to keep in mind…

You probably won’t like ALL 50 riffs.

You probably won’t have heard of all 50.

You will probably wish there were other, more obscure riffs on the list.

A few of you may disagree with the order of a few riffs.

You might say riff 23 should be swapped with 22 as it is marginally easier, etc. You may find one riff, say riff 41 really easy to play, but this list is laid out in order of difficulty of playing the riffs PROPERLY.

Some riffs are all about the rhythm and not so much the difficult or crazy amount of notes they contain.

These riffs in guitar can be deceptive.

If you have played for a few months and don’t have great rhythm but can play power chords pretty well, you may find some of these power chord based riffs bit easier to play.

This list is out there for everyone, but don’t forget it is ordered in level of difficulty for the complete newbie.

They are not only the coolest but some of the most famous riffs on guitar of all time

I love those VH1/BBC T.V. shows that showcase the best riffs of all time and I have sat there many a time with my family growing up geeking out over them. I’m sure you have too. Some of the riffs shown on some shows made us shout at the T.V.

Mostly when it was Def Leppard on there!

Yuck.

Sorry DF fans!

Anyway, just in case you are unsure, unless stated, we talking about the main riff of a song.

The one that everyone knows the song for. The list is a culmination of my years of teaching this kind of thing. I’ve found that this is the order that most people learn these riffs well. It has been adjusted and tweaked many times.

Just imagine rocking up to jam with some experienced musicians and at that awkward moment when they ask what you know, you just start blasting through riff after riff from this list.

Have fun and get cracking learning them all. No matter how long or how little you have been playing, you will learn a lot from learning all these cool riffs on guitar.