Somewhere out there, roughly 47 million TikTok users have sprained their tongues trying to say "Rhabarber-Barbara-Bar-Barbaren-Bart-Barbier." I looked at that beautiful disaster and thought: what if the humiliation could happen in my hands instead of my mouth? Great news — it can.
This is my short solo-guitar take on Barbaras Rhabarberbar by Bodo Wartke and Marti Fischer, the viral rhubarb tongue-twister that conquered the internet in early 2024. No lyrics required — just a swung little jazz groove that sounds effortless right up until you try to keep it in time.
How this rhubarb groove actually works
Strip away the words and Barbaras Rhabarberbar is a cheeky little swing tune riding a jazz cadence — think a ii–V–I loop dressed up in seventh chords like Cm7 and Bb7. On guitar the harmony is the easy part; the villain is the rhythm. The whole song lives on the swung offbeat, the same way the tongue-twister crams syllables between the strong beats. If your strums land square on the click, it sounds like a polka. If they lean and bounce, it swings.
The useful takeaway: practise this as a comping exercise, not a chord chart. Set a metronome slow, mute the strings with your fretting hand so you get a clean "chnk" on the upbeats, and lock the accents before you add a single melody note. Get the groove breathing first — the fancy stuff is trivial once your right hand knows where the pocket is. Turning a mouthful into a handful is really just chord-melody plus good time.
Play it slow enough and you'll nail Barbaras Rhabarberbar without a single facial injury — which is more than the original singers can promise. Grab the tab and backing track, and if you want the Guitar Pro file and my other cover breakdowns, they live on my Patreon.