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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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