Some riffs seduce you with a fancy chord; My Sharona just grabs you by the sternum and shakes. The Knack wrote it back in 1979, and nearly fifty years later it still ambushes you in supermarkets, film trailers, and — apparently — your own guitar.
This is Riff #11: a play-through of that punchy, danceable main riff, one of the tightest and most rhythmically stubborn hooks in all of power-pop. PDF and Guitar Pro downloads are below if you want the exact fingering instead of my vague hand-waving.
How the My Sharona riff actually works
Here's the trick nobody tells you: the notes are the easy part. The whole riff basically lives on one low power-chord shape, and yet it's physically impossible to sit still to. The magic is rhythm — a syncopated, start-stop figure where the rests are load-bearing. Half of "My Sharona" is silence, and that silence is exactly what makes the notes punch.
So treat your picking hand like a drummer. Palm-mute every hit so it's short and percussive, then kill the string dead in the gaps — no ringing, no mush. Keep your strumming hand moving through the rests (a ghost stroke over muted strings) so you always land back on the beat instead of guessing where it is. Nail that and you've quietly fixed the most common rhythm mistakes beginners make: it's not about playing more, it's about stopping on time.
Once the groove locks in, you'll understand why bassists refuse to play anything else at soundcheck. If you want the Guitar Pro file, the slow-motion breakdown, and my ongoing quest to annoy my neighbours in strict tempo, it's all on Patreon.