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Becoming a better rhythm player: triplets and strumming

Two years ago, I started this blog with a series on songwriting. I finished fifteen posts, and then went careening off into other areas of personal interest. Some of it, I hope, was of interest to readers. Some of it was me clarifying my own process of music-making.

 

Triplets

I ended the series with posts about rhythm, but I didn’t get past quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s the last post in that series.

How to make chord progressions a pro would love, Part 15: Rhythm III – Strumming

 

So I didn’t get to triplets. Too bad, because they’re kind of awesome.

 

Here’s what they look like, and how to count them.

triplets

 

As with eighth-notes, you need to keep a steady beat and distribute the notes evenly over that beat.

Use a metronome to get this right. Most metronomes can play eighth-notes and triplets while accenting the downbeat. This is really useful for hearing what I mean by “distribute the notes evenly over that beat.”

 

Eighth-note strumming

Strumming triplets turns out to be more challenging than strumming quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s why.

With eighth-notes, you naturally use an up-and-down strumming motion, hitting the downbeat on the down-stroke (square bracket symbol) and the upbeat on the upstroke (wedge symbol).

eighth notes strum

 

It feels pretty natural. After all, you have to bring your arm up after the down-stroke in preparation for the next down-stroke. Might as well hit the strings as you do.

 

Triplet strumming

But with triplets, everything changes. If you use an up-and-down strumming motion, you wind up using an upstroke on every second down-beat. In the following example, that means on beats 2 and 4. Like this:

triplets strum

 

This means that you don’t get to use gravity to emphasize those downbeats where you use an upstroke. This feels weird, and it’s why some people use down-strokes exclusively when strumming triplets.

But practice it anyway. If you do, you’ll make your upstrokes as strong as your down-strokes. This will make you a more flexible and interesting rhythm player. It will also make people want to play with you more.

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Songwriting and sonic texture

I’ve been talking a lot about ambient/textural music and sound in the last number of weeks, but how does all this fit into song-writing?

Song-writing isn’t just about chords, melody, and words. Conceptually, it starts there, usually with words that seem to work only if music is supporting them. And that music usually has some relation to the words. Or it should, even if it’s only minor key for sad song, major key for happy song.

 

Conventions

Here’s some other conventional material that can be used to support words:

 

  • A guitar solo (with or without the rest of the band) to illustrate loneliness
  • Arpeggiated chords to illustrate a lighter mood
  • Power chords to illustrate confidence or aggression
  • Silence to build tension

 

This list can get pretty long, and of course any of these can illustrate something other than what I’ve indicated here. But each choice should have some sort of reason for being there. Music should support the story of the words somehow, otherwise what’s the point of including it?

(At this point, it’s not a bad idea to list all the musical ideas, techniques, etc. that you can think of, and then try to relate them to lyrics that you’ve written).

 

Ambient experiment

Ambient sound can function as support for lyrics, too. Using the guitar, you can create sound that illustrates thunder, wind, industrial sound, etc.

But can you sing over these kinds of sounds? Of course, you don’t have to; they can just be used for effect.

But it’s fun to try.

As an experiment, take a melody from a song you know (or one you’ve written), create and loop an ambient sound, and sing that melody with the sound. Here’s a couple of ideas for ambient sound:

 

  • Delay pedal – set a delay of .5 second with maximum feedback; play long, single notes in the same key as the melody until you get a dense weave of notes.
  • Distortion – maximum distortion; rub or scrape the strings; don’t try to get any sort of conventional harmonic sound; just think noise.

 

These sounds can be disorienting to sing over. But give it a try. It usually sparks ideas, and it’s not like you have to use it as part of a song. Although you might want to.

 

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Guitar preparations and digital effects

Here’s one of the preparations that I use to get unconventional sounds from the guitar.

 

guitar prep

Guitar preparation allows me to create sound that doesn’t suggest the sound of the guitar. Eliminating the associations that the guitar brings to mind allows listeners to experience the sound itself.

The plastic stencil muffles the sound to a certain extent when the strings are activated; the knife produces a sustained ringing sound when struck with wood or metal; the stone cube with the metal stems muffles the sound, but in a different way than the stencil. It can also be used to scrape the strings.

 

Digital processing 

The great thing about digital effects software (I’m using Guitar Rig 5) is that you can experiment with effects by “piling on.” This means using multiple iterations of the same effect just to see what happens.

Here’s one of my favourites.

guitar rig reso

 

Resochord is a pitch modifier and harmonizer. It uses single pitches or chords and can pitch shift them and sustain them. Stacking a number of them like this creates a preset with a ton of harmonic possibilities. I’ve added a pitch pedal for more control, and a fuzz pedal when I want a grittier sound.

 

Preparation and effects

With the recipe of preparations and effects preset that I’ve outlined here, I’m able to produce the following sounds:

 

  • Scraping the strings with stone

This reminds me of an animal sound (a roar of some kind?) slowed down. It’s difficult to hear it as a guitar sound.

 

  • Knife strike (weaving a knife between the strings and striking it with metal)

A bell-like sound with something that sounds like a distorted organ.

 

  • Flicking stencil (weaving a plastic stencil between the strings, pulling it upwards and letting it go)

Similiar to the knife strike, but with a different attack sound.

 

Playing straight (no preparations)

In this example, you can clearly hear the guitar.

 

These are examples of what can be done with one preset and guitar preparations. Preset creation is not limitless, but it’s extremely extensive. Mixed with the huge variety of guitar preparations, the guitar becomes an instrument capable of tremendous sonic possibility.

 

Songwriting…

And it can be used this way for songwriting. More on that in the next post…

 

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