JasonShadrick

This is a guest post from Peter Hodgson, who is the editor of the iheartguitar blog.  It is one of my top 5 blogs I would recommend to anyone who is interested in guitar.  If you are interested in contributing a guest post, please contact me here.

One of the most effective ways of injecting excitement into a riff is syncopation. In a nutshell, syncopation is when you play a note on a beat where you probably wouldn’t expect a note. Now, when I’m playing guitar I tend to approach rhythm differently at different times. When I’m soloing I’m led by whatever melody pops into my head. As a result, the rhythm can be a bit unconventional. But when I’m playing metal rhythm, I’m all about the 16th note pulse. I keep the 16^th notes in mind even if I’m not actually playing them – for example, even when I’m playing a chugging 8th note riff I’m listening to the notes in between as well, and every now and then I might fill those spaces with little accents. Try it some time: picture the musical bar as a version of that board game Mastermind, except instead of four rows to put the pegs in, there are 16. Each peg represents a note or chord, and there’s ya rhythm.

As an example of syncopation I present to you a couple of riffs from my song ‘Just One Thing,’ which you can hear a rough mix of on my Myspace at www.myspace.com/peterhodgson The first riff has a note on every one of those 16 spaces, but some of them are accented chord stabs and others are palm-muted. The result is a steady pulse punctuated by jarring but kinda cool chords in places where you don’t really expect them, and this track has burned the brain of many a drummer for the first few listens. Initially it seems like an odd time signature, and it’s fun to watch a drummer take out the slide ruler and metronome to try to figure out where the ‘one’ is, only to realise the underlying beat is so simple that even a guitarist like me could come up with it.

Another way to approach this riff, if you’re not into the whole ‘thinking in 16th notes’ thing is to run the riff through a few times then only think about the fretted notes, letting the open-string notes in between take care of themselves by going on semi-autopilot with your alternate picking. That’s a method I find especially handy playing some Muse riffs where I’d rather enjoy the riff than think about the maths behind it.

The autopilot alternate picking method ain’t gonna help you in Riff 2 though. This one is purely chord-stab, with no chuggy muted notes in between. You need to pay close attention to the rhythm to get this one to work. Once again, imagine 16 slots. Okay? Okay. Now, in the first bar of this section, the chords fall on sub-beats 1, 2, 5, 10 and 15/16 (the last two actually being a three-note chug). Let’s try this with capitals and lower-case letters: BA-BA-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-ba-ba-BADDABA.

Obviously this kinda stuff is best used as a springboard for your own riffs and ideas. You could probably even use a 16-sided dice (you have one in your junk drawer, right?) to help you come up with random note locations. Above all, just have fun with it and don’t hurt yourself.

Download the TAB (PDF)

I just finished reading a great post by Ronan Guilfoyle about the (over)use of complicated rhythms in jazz today.  Ronan is an excellent bassist, amazing jazz educator and real authority on rhythm (he literally wrote the book on it).  It is interesting to me that Ronan isn’t criticizing the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation, but the idea that modern jazz musicians use those techniques as an end in itself.

Via Ronan’s Blog

Instead, it seems to me that often a new explicit statement of the form seems to have appeared. Rather than having the form be something that is invisible — a guiding structure that only the musicians are aware of — the new orthodoxy seems to be to create music that is not only rhythmically complex but is explicitly so — wearing its mathematical heart on its sleeve so to speak. Pieces are played with mathematical precision, and having achieved the technical wherewithal to deal with these new complex rhythms a lot of musicians seem to be happy to leave it at that. They seem to be proud to be able to play five over three, for example, as if the act of achieving an accurate representation of this is an end in itself. The fives and the threes are rigidly marked off and flagged, as if the musicians want to display the nuts and bolts of their achievement to an admiring crowd. It’s a reversal of the other tradition i mentioned — rather than have the form act as a kind of internalised guiding principle, the form of the piece in this more recent approach is used as a kind of exoskeleton that is worn proudly by the musicians as they negotiate the treacherous twists and turns of their rhythmic high wire act.

Many times in college we worked on exercises and techniques that opened our eyes and ears to different rhythmic concepts.  Sometimes they worked, others not so much.  I also feel that in order to make these concepts sound natural and organic, you must go through a period of living, breathing and playing them.  Many times when I listen to groups, I feel like when everything they play is in a different time signature it does begin to sound stale to me.  However, I need to side with Ronan on this one.  Lately it seems like in order to be a jazz musician, you need to use some form of rhythmic trickery on every tune. Not so.

I am preparing a blog post on some of my favorite exercises using more complicated rhythmic ideas, but until then what are your favorite ways of “hiding the one”?

I created a few worksheets for my students to help them learn some different voicings for major, dominant and minor seventh chords.  These were the most downloaded worksheets from my last blog and I thought it would be useful to post them here again.

Major 7th Chord Voicings

Dominant 7th Chord Voicings

Minor 7th Chord Voicings

I will also post these on my Guitar Resources page.

This is also probably a good time to announce that I have opened up my schedule to allow for more private lessons.  These will take place on Monday evenings and Saturdays.  I will be teaching at the Warner Center for Arts Education in Torrington, CT.  If you are interested in signing up for lessons, please call 860-489-7180.

As I develop more worksheets for my students, I will post them here.

Below I have linked to 5 different articles that I have been reading and find quite useful.  All of these articles I have passed around to fellow musicians so I felt the need to post them here.  Please check them out and subscribe to these blogs, these guys definitely know what they are doing.

15 Practicing Mistakes that Students Make

Jason Heath was one of the first music bloggers who I really took notice of.  Even though I wasn’t a bass player his Contrabass Conversations Podcast was amazingly captivating.  Many times I spent listening to his interviews while mowing the lawn.  Make sure to dig through his site because he has many, many useful articles that would be helpful to all musicians.

Top Music Pedagogues to Follow on Twitter

Music Education is a big interest of mine, not suprisingly, so the MusTech.net website is one of my most revisited items in my Google Reader.  This article lists a few leading edge educators who combine music and technology in interesting and effective ways.  Right now the list has about 12 educators, but the plan is to keep adding to it to create a comprehensive listing (much like my Twitter Guitar Directory).  This is one to bookmark and revisit.

10 Teaching Tools for Your Lesson Studio

I have been teaching guitar lessons for about 8 years now and I still found this article helpful.  If you are starting to settle into a (hopefully) permanent teaching situation then this list will be very helpful.  My favorite item on the list is the Clif Bars, I can totally relate to getting hungry and still having 3 or 4 lessons to teach before you can leave.

The Unboxing of Sibelius 6

Walt Riberio is one of the leading voices for combining music education and social media.  His videos cover everything from basic theory to gear reviews and even advice on how to best use the internet to spread your message.  I wanted to include this video because I just received a copy of Sibelius 6 and I think it is the greatest notation program available.  There is no way I would of been able to finish my Master’s Degree without it.

How Audacity Can Make Your Practice Time More Effective

Audacity is a great FREE audio editor that can do everything from make loops to slow down tracks at pitch to help with Transcription. NotPlayingGuitar.com is an amazing resource that has many lessons and tips on how to get over the roadblocks that we as musicians sometime fall into. If you are interested in recording some basic tracks and don’t want to spend money, then start with this article.

During our Jam Summit, we were lucky enough to have two of the most in demand musicians on the scene as special guests, Jimmy Herring and Oteil Burbridge. Jimmy and Oteil have a long history together. They first came to prominence as members of Col. Bruce Hampton’s Aquarium Rescue Unit.

Oteil has been the bassist in the Allman Brothers Band for the last twelve years and Jimmy has been holding down the guitar chair in Widespread Panic. This fall both bands are heading out on a tour together. The combination of Oteil, Jimmy, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks will be one you surely don’t want to miss.

The clinic was a great mix of some performances with our NGW faculty Drum Instructor Simon Lott and questions from the audience. Many topics were covered from live as a professional musician to the creative process.

One of the most interesting topics that Jimmy covered was the use of chord scales within the context of Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor and Natural Minor scales. Soon I will have a handout available showing these ideas.

This was one of the better clinics I have been to in recent memory and we look forward to having them back again!