September 6, 2010
My Blog by Kuba Suttles
www.bowtownmusic.com
Music: More about playing rhythm guitar
Happy Labour Day everyone. Yes, today is the day to think about how the workers of the world want you to respect what they do, so that you can enjoy this wonderful life that you have. I, especially want to say thank you to all the farmers out there. Did you know that if it weren't for the farmers, we'd still be a hunter/gatherer, tribal culture? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being hunter/ gatherers. I've tried living that way myself to a degree. And maybe the environment would be better off if we were still in the stone age, but that's another topic.
I had a great session with one of my students today, which I want to share with you. The lesson was about playing rhythm on the guitar. My student has been playing for a while but still at an intermediate/beginner level. I have been trying, for a few sessions, to get across the idea of strumming down and up, how when you strum down, down, down, your hand is moving up each time, except you are missing the strings.
So we have been starting with a few very basic rhythm variations like, down, miss, down, up, down, up, down, up. You can try this with any chord, or even just open or muted strings to practice your right hand strumming. This is a simple four beat strum. You usually think of the down strums as the beat ( the numbers), and the up strums as the "and". So If you strum down, down, down, down and count one, two, three, four, you will count the up strums as one and, two and, three and, four and. So that variation at the beginning of this paragraph could be counted as one miss, two and, three and, four and.
What we discovered during our last session was that, for more complex rhythm structures, it was necessary to break down the measures into each beat. For an example, we looked at a song by Daughtry called Life After You. This is a song in 6/8 time, which is fairly difficult for a beginner. The basic strum for this song is down, miss, down, up, miss, up, down, miss, down, miss, down, miss. Or you could count: one, two and, and, four, five, six.
This was a little complicated to get your head around so I suggested taking it one beat at a time. So the first beat is just down, miss. The second beat is down up. Put the two together as down, miss, down, up. That's not too hard. Now the next strum is a down, which you are going to miss. So practice just to that miss down. Do it over and over until you can do it fairly quickly. The next strum is an up. So practice just to that up. If you have got that far, all you have to do is the next three beats down, down, down. That's down, down, up, up, down, down, down. Or: one, two and, and, four, five, six. Try to start the next set of six beats right away so you don't loose a beat.
There are rhythms which involve sixteenth strums, which means you are playing eight downs and eight ups. To get a feel for doing these kind of strums. I suggest starting by playing the first down of each down, up, down, up, a little louder so that you are accenting the first of every four strokes. Try counting these as: One, up, down, up, Two, up, down, up, Three, up ,down, up, Four, up, down, up. All the funky, syncopated rhythms use these sixteenth note strums, so practice until you can do it fairly fast. More about strumming later!!!
