Here is a good one to get your fingers, your brain and your ear honed up. This is a piece that I've adapted from a tune my band plays. When we do it live, the bass player plays the three-note 'boomp-boomp-boomp' and I play the chordal thing. The other day I was working out a way to play both together as I'm thinking of adding the tune to my solo repertoire. It was just a matter of mapping out the two parts and I thought this would make a good lesson.

What makes this one tricky is that the bass line that I start out with, the 'boomp-boomp-boomp', is a sort of triplet feel and the other part is a straight eights feel. I remember when we rehearsed this tune with the band , the bass player had to concentrate for while in order to keep that triplet feel happening under the straight eights feel. It was a case of pat-the-head-rub-the-belly. So, you have keep that triplet bass line going under the straight eights feel of the chordal stuff.

It's all in A. I guess I could have written in all the 7thsus4 and slash chords that come and go in the sequence but really, it's all just a bunch of A stuff. 

You'll see and hear how my right-hand keeps the feel going in the gaps. I tried to keep them clean and empty but couldn't. My hand just kept keeping time, but you'll see that I have muted all the strings so it's more of a percussion thing that I'm doing. In the band, I play a Strat and that percussive thing adds to the overall feel.

It's quite complex, with lots of little bits and pieces woven together. The main thing is to keep time. I'm lucky enough to have a very strong internal metronome, so I don't really need to tap my foot but I recommend you do if you find it hard to keep track of the beat.

There are a few points to take away from this lesson:

• Yes, you can play rhythm guitar with your fingers. A lot of players think of 'rhythm guitar' as a flat-pick  strumming process. It needn't be. You can express a rhythm part quite easily and effectively using your fingers. You just have to approach it like a keyboard player would.
• The driving force of playing fingerstyle rhythm is the interplay between the thumb (bass) and the other fingers (chords). You're either hitting them together or separately. Once you know which is which, there is no more mystery. This lesson is a mix of both, on the downbeats and the offbeats, which is why it's 'syncopated'.
• You need to be deliberate about all the bits and pieces. Never just let your fingers do what they want to do: you're in charge. Once you've learned it, of course, your fingers will know and you can stop thinking about it.
• This is not a set piece with just one way of playing it. I encourage you to experiment, to change things around, to mix it all up.
• As always, the main thing is to have fun. Once you get this, you're going to find it's a LOT of fun playing it.

Download the tab and notation below if you need it.