Difference between revisions of "Applying Rhythm to Chords"

Revision as of 22:19, 7 June 2014

Whenever you're talking about strumming chords, you have to necessarily think of the guitar as a percussive instrument just as much as a harmonic one. Even a great progression can become boring without a driving, interesting rhythm. We have lots of tools at our disposal to create one. The sharp attack but lasting sustain make for quite a contrast, but can still be contrasted further with rests. Mutes and palm mutes further enhance the percussive nature of the instrument and increase our palette. This is all in addition to a wide dynamic range accessible by pick strength, as well as the different tone of downstrokes vs. upstrokes.

PreReqs

• C Major Chord
• F Major Chord
• G Major Chord
• E Minor, D Minor, and A Minor Chords

Strumming Notation

Before we've seen tab used to show a melody with just the chord markings above. We have previous tab demonstrations(also) of some simple rhythmic patterns, where we marked the note durations above the tab, using the following note values:

*so rare I don't really have a marking for it

I believe this is the best we can do with text-based tab. In professional tablature, strumming notation resides the same way, except uses markings that resemble note markings - ovals, open or filled-in, with or without stems. However, since we know the chord voicing and there's not really a pitch to the strummed "note", all strums reside at an equal horizontal orientation. There is no staff. The markings do not indicate pitch, only rhythm.

The best part of the professional notation is that it can easily mark a muted srum, by writing a strike-through line through the stem of the note.

Internet-based tab may also resort to using slashes as such:

C / / X G / / X C / / XXF//// /

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4n1n2n3 4
q q q q q q q q q q q eeeeeeq q

What the first example is supposed to represent is based on the spacing, as well as the common practice of playing a new chord on the down beat of a measure. We are also assuming 4/4 time. Then you have the note values written simply by their spacing. The /'s are strums of the last named chord. The name of each chord also indicates to strum. And the X's represent muted strums.

This may be a bit too ambiguous for my tastes, but in many cases it gets the job done, especially if it's just a simple quarter/eighth note strumming pattern. However, when placed over tab for a melody, lead, or fill guitar, then often spacing has to be altered to accommodate the variety of spaces needed to play the given notes. For instance, one measure may be a simple sustained whole note, while the next measure is an insane tapping, legato, bending lick with vibrato, that takes up quite some space to notate properly. It'd be nice if we didn't have to make that 1st plain measure giant size to indicate its temporal equivalence to the extremely busy 2nd measure.

I like to use:

C     x G     x C     xxF
q q q q q q q q q q q eeeeeeq q

It takes up 2 lines vs. 1 but it's perfectly clear what is being indicated.

Technique

Even the most famous shred players tend to alter their technique when strumming chords. If plucking single strings is like writing with a pen, strumming is more like painting with a paintbrush. There's typically elbow and wrist movement, with each stroke having a bit more "momentum". The back-and-forth motion should be continuous and consistent, even if you are not actually strumming on some of those strokes. Your right arm should be like a pendulum of a grandfather clock, perfectly keeping time. It should not be waiting on the left hand to fret notes. It's more important to stay in-time and play on the beats than to perfectly fret every note, but obviously if your left hand is way off, it's still going to sound bad. If you can't make the chord shapes fast enough to keep time, you'll need to either slow down or work more on your left hand chord shapes.

Typically, the right hand should be strumming with downstrokes on all the beats and strumming upstrokes between the beats. For example, in 4/4 time, the downstrokes are the quarter notes on the beats, while the upstrokes are the eighth notes in between them.

1   n   2   n   3   n   4   n
d   u   d   u   d   u   d   u

For any chords that sustain longer than a half of a beat and extend into the next stroke, your right hand should still be making the strumming motions as though you are trying to strum the chords; however, you are strumming over the strings without making contact. This seems a bit ridiculous, but it really helps keep your right hand locked in-time and makes it much easier to play off-time strumming without getting lost.

1       2   n   3      (4)  n
d  (u)  d   u   d  (u) (d)  u
()'s indicate not to hit strings

For any chords that divide the beat into quarters instead of halves, you will have to essentially double your right hand speed temporarily.

1   n   2 u n u 3   n   4   n
d   u   d u d u d   u   d   u

Mutes and Rests

Mutes and rests become quite important to get a good rhythmic feel to strumming chords. Muted strums are very percussive, moreso than any other variety. Rests are also useful to contrast against all other types of playing. For any beat, we can play a strum, sustain a chord strummed on a prior beat, play a muted strum, or rest.

The way to perform a rest is incidentally by muting the strings, using both the left and right hands, as described previously. This is not to be confused by a muted strum, which uses a left hand mute while strumming with the right hand, which is unfortunately often called just a "mute". So, I use the classical term rest to describe it here to avoid confusion.

Muted strums' percussive nature allows them to have clarity while strumming quickly. They are also easier to play than most chords, as they require less precision. When alternating between barre chords and muted strums, it's often simple enough to simply reduce left hand pressure on the strings so they come off the frets but are still pressed against the fingers. If barring on a strong harmonic placement, such as on the 5th, 7th, or 12th frets, you may need to shift position slightly when muting to avoid getting a natural harmonic instead of a strong muted strum.

   F#      x x x x         x x x x E      r      F#     r      B
   e   e   s s s s e   e   s s s s q      q      q      q      w
   d   d   d u d u d   d   d u d u d             d             d

   1   n   2 u n u 3   n   4 u n u 1      2      3      4      1  ... 
   d   d   d u d u d   d   d u d u d             d             d
e--2---2---x-x-x-x-2---2---x-x-x-x|0-------------2------------|2-----
b--2---2---x-x-x-x-2---2---x-x-x-x|0------r------2------r-----|4-----
g--3---3---x-x-x-x-3---3---x-x-x-x|1------e------3------e-----|4-----
d--4---4---x-x-x-x-4---4---x-x-x-x|2------s------4------s-----|4-----
a--4---4---x-x-x-x-4---4---x-x-x-x|2------t------4------t-----|2-----
e--2---2---x-x-x-x-2---2---x-x-x-x|0-------------2------------|------

Lots of info up here. Here's the chord notation as well as full tab.

Simple Strumming Patterns

Straight On-Beat

1   2   3   4  |1   2   3   4  |
q   q   q   q   q   q   q   q
/   /   /   /   /   /   /   /

Accented Downbeat

1   2   3   4  |1   2   3   4  |
q   e e e e e e|q   e e e e e e|
/   / / / / / / /   / / / / / /

3/4 Time - Accented Downbeat

1   2   3  |1   2   3  |
q   e e e e|q   e e e e|
/   / / / / /   / / / /

Accents Over Mutes

1   2   3   4  |1   2   3   4  |
q   q   e e e e|q   q   e e e e|
/   /   x x x x /   /   x x x x

Playing Off-beat

Accenting Backbeat or Raggae Feel

Rather

Half Step Slides

Sometimes an interesting way to accent a chord is by sliding up or down into it from a half-step below or above. This is most commonly found in jazz and funk, as well as blues and thus older rock.

   1 n 2 n 3 n 1 n 2 n 3 n 1
e--4\3-x-x-3---3-3---3-3---3---
b--4\3-x-x-3-r-3-3---3-3---4---
g--4\3-x-x-3-e-3-3---3-3---5---
d--6\5-x-x-5-s-5-5---5-5---5---
a--6\5-x-x-5-t-5-5---5-5---3---
e--4\3-x-x-3---3-3---3-3-------

Common placement for the slide is on the first beat, delaying the impact of the true chord. A blues or similar shuffle may use it for the first beat of every measure. It is ideal for places like establishing a key at the beginning of a song or during a modulation, but it does not work for strong cadences like the V - I or V - i.

Tuplets/Triplets

Tuplets are rhythmic structures that subdivide a beat into a number of equally long sub-beats that isn't a multiple of 2. They consist of a beam marker that connects the notes, with a number or ratio of numbers written above.

  1      |2   n   |3  tr lt|3 u n u|4
  q      |e   e   |e  e  e |s s s s|q
         |        |---3--- |       |
  C      |/   /   |/  /  / |/ / / /|/

The "---3---" above the strums indicates a triplet - here we have a quarter note on the first beat, 2 notes for the 2nd beat, 3 on the 3rd, and 4 on the 4th. We count this as "1 2 and 3 trip-let 4 uh and uh". I included the note names: q - quarter, e - eighth, s - sixteenth.

The ratio indicates the length of time the note should consume, compared to its non-tuplet duration. For instance, 2 eighth notes are equal to 1 quarter note. A ratio of 3:2 over a group of 3 eighth notes indicates that these 3 eighth notes should consume the same time as 2 normal eighth notes would. Thus, you get 3 equal length notes that sum to the same amount of time as a quarter note, which is 1 beat in 4/4 time.

Often the group of notes is all the same type and consumes the entire beat. For instance (in 4/4), you'll see a 3:2 tuplet of 3 eighth notes, or a 6:4 tuplet of sixteenth notes, or a 12:8 tuplet of thirty second notes. In these cases, you often only see the numerator of the ratio marked. We assume the denominator is however many of that note normally make up a single beat. In 4/4, 2 eighth notes, 4 sixteenth notes, and 8 thirty second notes all equal 1 beat.

It's rare, but there are cases where the ratio must be specified because the rhythm would otherwise be ambiguous. For example, you may have a single eighth note marked with a 6:5 tuplet, then 3 quarter notes marked with a 8:7 tuplet, then 1 quarter note marked with a 24:23 tuplet. Believe it or not, this actually adds up to a perfect 4 beats of time. I'll prove it.

• 5 8th notes = 2.5 beats. The 1 6:5 eighth note = 1/6 of 2.5 beats = 15/36ths of one beat
• 7 quarter notes = 7 beats. The 3 8:7 quarter notes = 3/8 of 7 beats = 21/8ths of one beat, or 2 and 5/8 beats.
• 15/36ths + 21/8ths = 120/288ths + 756/288 = 876/288 = 438/144 = 219/72 = 73/24
• to get 4 full beats, we need (4 * 24)/24 = 96/24ths. We already have 73/24ths, leaving us needing 23/24ths.
• We invert this to get our tuplet for the last quarter note - 24:23. It equals 1/24 of 23 beats, or 23/24ths of 1 beat.

Most of the time, such crazy math isn't necessary or really even useful. It's usually clear what the composer or transcriber wanted you to play when you look at the notation. Simple triplets can be a bit difficult to understand and even more difficult to execute at first. But once you can consistently play triplets, a rabbit hole of rhythmic possibilities. But this takes us back to what we first learned in the Music Theory Basics lesson. The whole concept of rhythm - using time signatures, tempos, beats, and measures - is designed to provide us a framework to organize musical ideas temporally. Writing and playing rhythms that deviate so wildly from the chosen framework is perhaps a bit counter-productive, unless the desired effect is to re-encompass the randomness and chaos that would ensue if we totally removed our rhythmic framework. Using random note durations may not line up phrases with measures and down beats, but they would still line up with the beats. Using random tuplets on the other hand would certainly cause notes to line up randomly off timed with all the beats.

"My God, when is he going to get to it?" -Everybody

Now as far as strumming rhythm goes, triplets or other tuplets that contain an odd division of a beat (such as 3rds, 5ths, or 7ths) are going to throw us off a bit. We play them the same as above by speeding up and playing on each stroke. The problem is we end up reversing our up and down strokes, due to the odd division. If the pattern has two triplets, then we don't need to worry about it because they will cancel out. If not, we need to find some space to try to get back on beat. Or we just have to recognize that we've reversed down and up strokes and keep chugging along.

1   n   2  tr lt 3       4   n
d   u   d  u  d  u  (u)  d   u
using space to get back on beat - play a mini, fake upstroke on the 3.5 beat.

1   n   2  tr lt 3   n   4  tr lt
d   u   d  u  d  u   d   u  d  u
two triplets in the same measure - let them cancel out

1   n   2  tr lt 3   n   4   n   1   n   2  tr lt 3   n   4   n
d   u   d  u  d  u   d   u   d   u   d   u  d  u  d   u   d   u
only one triplet in a measure - just deal with it and switch

Swing Feel

A swing feel is delaying the second of every pair of notes, usually on eighth notes. It usually is marked in sheet music or tab with "swing feel", then the closest interpretation:

      --3--
e e = q   e

That means two eighth notes should be played as a triplet of 3 eighth notes, with the first two beamed, or sustained. That's the same as a triplet of one quarter note and one eighth note.

While the quarter-eighth triplet is the most common feel, a swing feel is not necessarily (a) strict, and (b) defined as such. Depending on what part of the song is playing and the intended effect, the player may choose to increase or decrease the swing. It can be section, phrase, or even note-dependent. Or other swing feels:

e e = e. s

      --5--
e e = q. q

Sweeps and Arpeggios

Legato Embellishments

Jazz Comping

Puttin the Stank on Power Chords

One thing mentioned earlier was accents. Up until now we've touched on all the other techniques but haven't gotten too much into accents. Power chord strumming relies on some dynamic right hand playing to really bring the chords to life. Using a crunch distortion, each accented strum pushes the distortion and gets a crisp, bright breakup, while other strums are percussive but darker and warmer.

When I say accent, I mean it - I want you to bash those guitar strings, getting some brief fret buzz during the attack of the sound. Remember those examples from this lesson? Let's revisit them using accents instead of single notes vs. power chords:

todo

Homework

Q & A

Related Lessons

• Prev: Suspended Chords
• Next: Circle of Fifths