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.

 

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).

 

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:

 

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.