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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Improve your guitar-playing rhythm, feel, and timing If you want to improve your timing, sharpen your technique, or get inspired by new ideas, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies breaks down the basics of reading, counting, strumming, and picking rhythms on guitar to make you an ace on the axe in no time. With the help of this friendly guide, you'll learn to play examples of eighth and sixteenth note rhythms--including common strum patterns heard in popular music--to improve your guitar rhythm, feel, and timing. Plus, access to audio downloads and online video lessons complement the coverage presented in the book, giving you the option of supplementing your reading with additional visual and audio learning. There's no denying that guitar is one of the coolest musical instruments on the planet. Okay, perhaps undeniably the coolest. Whether you bow at the feet of Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, the Edge, or Eddie Van Halen, they all have one thing in common: they make it look incredibly, naturally easy! However, anyone who's actually picked up a guitar knows that mastering rhythm and technique is something that takes a lot of practice--not to mention good coaching. Luckily, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies makes your aspirations to play guitar like the pros attainable with loads of helpful step-by-step instruction on everything from mastering hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides to perfecting your picking--and beyond. * Covers strum patterns, articulations, picking techniques, and more * Showcases musical styles such as pop, rock, blues, folk, and funk * Includes techniques for playing with both your right and left hand * Provides access to online audio tracks and video instruction so you can master the concepts and techniques presented in the book Whether you're new to guitar or an advanced player looking to improve your musical timing and skills, Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies quickly gets you in the groove before the rhythm gets you.
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Seitenzahl: 338
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Media and software compilation copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958346
ISBN 978-1-119-02287-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-02288-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-02289-3 (ebk)
Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/guitarrhythmandtechniquefordummies to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Getting Started with Guitar Rhythm and Technique
Chapter 1: Rhythm and Technique in a Nutshell
Recognizing the Importance of Rhythm and Technique
Reading and Playing Basic Rhythms
Developing Your Strumming Technique
Honing Your Fretting-Hand Techniques
Honing Your Picking-Hand Techniques
Using Whammy Bars
Playing Slide Guitar and Using Open Tunings
Getting Your Practice In
Chapter 2: Getting to Know the Music Staff and Traveling through Time
Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse
Drawn and Quartered
Part II: Reading Rhythms and Strumming Patterns
Chapter 3: Playing Eighth-Note Strum Patterns
Getting Behind the Eight Ball
Sustaining and Resting
Playing Popular Patterns: Eighth Notes
Resting Rhythms
Scratching the Surface
Chapter 4: Playing Sixteenth-Note Strum Patterns
Sweet Sixteenths
Popular Patterns: Sixteenth Notes
Resting Rhythms
Scratching
Four Steps to Funky
Accenting the Positive
Chapter 5: Playing Triplets, Shuffles, and Compound Time Signatures
Three-Ring Circus: Playing Triplets
Lost in the Shuffle
Compound Interest: Playing Eighth-Note Time Signatures
Part III: Fretting-Hand Techniques
Chapter 6: Working with Fingerings
Change Up: Exploring Optional Chord Fingerings
Tipping the Scales: Experimenting with Different Scale Fingerings
Playing Octaves
Chapter 7: Adding Articulation and Expression
Working with Articulations
Chapter 8: Sounding Harmonics
Natural-Born Citizens: Playing Natural Harmonics
Change Your Tune: Tuning With Harmonics
Artificial Sweeteners: Playing Artificial Harmonics
Playing Harp Harmonics
In a Pinch: Playing Pinch Harmonics
Chapter 9: Using Alternate Tunings and Playing Slide Guitar
Using Alternate Tunings
Playing Slide Guitar
Part IV: Picking-Hand Techniques
Chapter 10: Picking and Choosing: Exploring Picking Techniques
Using a Guitar Pick
Alternating Current: Strict Alternate Picking
Tremulous Tremolo: Playing Single Notes at High Speeds
In the Palm of Your Hand: Palm Muting
Clean Sweep: Sweep Picking and Raking
Using Economy Picking
Inside and Outside Picking
A Hop, Skip, and a Jump Away: String Skipping
Cross Your Fingers: Crosspicking
Chapter 11: Fingerpickin’ Good: Exploring Fingerstyle Techniques
Getting to Know Your Fingers
Getting Started with Fingerpicking
Playing Chord Melody Style
Hybrid Picking: Using a Pick and Fingers
Slap Happy: Incorporating Slap Rhythm into Your Playing
Chapter 12: Using a Tremolo System
Defining Tremolo
Using a Tremolo System
Part V: Practice Makes Perfect
Chapter 13: Running Down Your Rhythms
Slow and Simple
Moderate and Meaty
Fast and Furious
Chapter 14: Picking through Scales with Melodic Patterns
By the Numbers
Melodic Patterns in Groups of Three
Melodic Patterns in Groups of Four
Melodic Patterns in Thirds
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 15: Ten Technique Tracks
“Purple Haze” (1967)
“Stairway to Heaven” (1971)
“Free Bird” (1974)
“Wish You Were Here” (1975)
“Hotel California” (1977)
“Dust in the Wind” (1978)
“Pride and Joy” (1983)
“Master of Puppets” (1986)
“Sweet Child o’ Mine” (1988)
“Tears in Heaven” (1992)
Chapter 16: Ten (Or So) Guitarists to Inspire Your Rhythm and Technique
Chet Atkins C.G.P. (1924–2001)
B.B. King (1925– )
Bob Dylan (1941– )
Jeff Beck (1944– )
Tony Iommi (1948– )
James Taylor (1948– )
Mark Knopfler (1949– )
Bonnie Raitt (1949– )
Nile Rodgers (1952– )
Eddie Van Halen (1955– )
Kirk Hammett (1962– )
Appendix: Audio Tracks and Video Clips
Discovering What’s on the Audio Tracks
Looking at What’s on the Video Clips
About the Author
Cheat Sheet
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Introduction
Rhythm is the pace and pattern of a piece of music. Technique is the procedure and skill used to sound notes. Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies is where you get a grip on keeping time and hone your guitar-playing chops so that you play music well and progress to new levels.
About This Book
This book covers a wide array of rhythm and technique topics, with focus on the most used and most practical skills. You get a grip on keeping time and playing strum patterns, as well as reading and counting basic rhythms. Your fretting-hand fingers get in shape by working with guitar articulations such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and bends, and you explore various ways in which you can finger chords and fret scales in order to play to your strengths. On the other hand (literally), you work with various methods of flatpicking, fingerpicking, and hybrid picking — skills that add variety to your playing. You also produce harmonics, play in alternate tunings, use a slide, and work with a tremolo system. Throughout the entire book you see references to popular songs and familiar artists, which helps you connect the concepts to the music you know and love — the types of songs you regularly hear on Top 40 and classic-rock radio stations.
The traditional approach to rhythm usually emphasizes all the aspects of standard musical notation and covers the gamut of note values and time signatures. This book focuses only on what you need to know in order to play popular strum patterns and read the most basic of rhythm charts. Instead of making you work to develop advanced skills at high levels of proficiency, this book serves as an overview of the most practical of guitar techniques that are common to popular styles and useful to increasing your versatility.
Here’s what sets this book apart from other guitar resource materials:
The practicality and efficiency of the content:
If you don’t need to know a certain topic or technique to play guitar and understand popular music, I don’t present it here.
The number of familiar song references:
Say goodbye to learning abstract ideas without knowing how they apply to the music you know and love! I refer to some of the most popular songs and famous guitarists of all time in the pages that follow.
As you work your way through this book, keep in mind that sidebars and Technical Stuff icons are skippable. Here are a few other things to note:
All the information applies to both acoustic and electric guitar unless otherwise noted.
I use six-string guitars and standard tuning in all examples and figures unless otherwise noted.
You can apply much of the information in the book to bass guitar, too.
I use a right-hander’s perspective throughout the book.
You have to look up and practice popular song references on your own. I don’t include the music here. (If you’re not sure where to find the music for a given song referenced in the text, check out
www.musicdispatch.com
,
www.musicnotes.com
, or
www.sheetmusicplus.com
.)
Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and you want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to go directly to the web page.
Before beginning the book, be sure to get your fingers and guitar prepared for optimal playing. Make sure the nails on your fretting hand are trimmed and filed so that they don’t interfere with your fretting of the strings. Also, make sure that your guitar has been professionally set up so that it’s easy to play and stays in tune.
Finally, in case you’re curious, I use the programs GuitarPro (www.guitar-pro.com), Neck Diagrams (www.neckdiagrams.com), and Sibelius (www.sibelius.com) to create notation and diagram figures.
Foolish Assumptions
This book is geared toward experienced beginners and intermediate guitar players. At the very least, you need to know the basics of guitar playing. You should have completed a beginner-level course, like Guitar For Dummies, and be able to play your way through many simple songs. Advanced guitarists can benefit from this book by filling in gaps that may have been overlooked over the years and sharpening skills that were never given the proper attention they deserve.
Whatever the case may be, to get the full benefit of this book, you need to know and be able to play and read the following:
Open chords and open-chord songs
Power chords and power-chord songs
Barre chords and barre-chord songs
Some melodies and riffs
Guitar tab and neck diagrams
You don’t need to be an expert on these concepts; you just need a working knowledge of them. You don’t have to know how to read standard musical notation, either, because what you need to know about the staff is covered.
If you still need to learn the basics and acquire the skills listed here, I suggest you start with Guitar For Dummies, by Mark Phillips and Jon Chappell (Wiley).
Icons Used in This Book
In order to highlight different types of information, I mark certain paragraphs with the following icons:
The Tip icon points out tips, tricks, shortcuts, and more that make your life as a guitar player a little easier.
The Remember icon points out especially important concepts that you don’t want to miss or forget.
The Technical Stuff icon highlights technical information (go figure!) that you can skip if you’re short on time (or if you just want to focus on the need-to-know stuff).
The Play This icon points out the audio tracks and video clips I’ve recorded to illustrate various rhythms and techniques throughout the book.
Beyond the Book
As if all the great information in this book weren’t enough, you can go beyond the book for even more!
I’ve recorded numerous audio tracks and video clips so that you can listen to and view various rhythms, techniques, and more throughout the book. Go to www.dummies.com/go/guitarrhythmtechnique to download these files.
Be sure to check out the free Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/guitarrhythmtechnique for all sorts of super-handy info, including a rhythm pyramid, finger exercises, and a warm-up routine.
Finally, you can find articles on following a lead sheet, singing and playing at the same time, getting the U2 sound, using a capo, and using accompaniment and tracks at www.dummies.com/extras/guitarrhythmtechnique.
Where to Go from Here
As with all For Dummies books, you don’t have to read this book from beginning to end. You can start anywhere you like. However, because some musical concepts build on others, you won’t be able to jump into some lessons without knowing what comes before them. For example, you can’t read and play eighth- and sixteenth-note strum patterns in Chapters 3 and 4 until after you get to know the music staff and note values in Chapter 2. That said, Parts I and II focus on reading and playing rhythms, primarily strum patterns and keeping time. Parts III and IV focus on techniques, primarily how you use your hands to manipulate the strings and sound notes. Part V puts everything in the book to good use through exercises and practice routines. Part VI gives you a little something extra to work on before you finish up.
You don’t need to learn and master every technique covered in this book. Pick and choose which techniques to focus on. Even the pro players mentioned in these pages have special areas of expertise. For example, Eddie Van Halen’s trademark technique is finger tapping, while Bonnie Raitt prefers to sound notes by using a slide. Each of these artists plays to his or her strengths and in ways that best suit his or her style. You may choose to focus on techniques that apply best to acoustic guitar, if that’s your preferred platform. You may focus on techniques heard in rock guitar solos if that’s the area in which you want to improve.
As you work through this book, work with each concept one at a time. Take breaks from the text to practice and rehearse what you read about. Your goal is to commit a skill to both your mental memory and your hand memory before reading on and playing more. With some concepts, you may learn them after only a few minutes of practice; others may take hours. Take as much time as you need to practice playing and rehearsing the topics I cover here. This isn’t a race. Enjoy the process and make everything stick — that is, work with the concepts until they become a permanent part of your playing.
It’s not enough to play something new off a page in this book. You need to play each rhythm and technique in context (that is, in actual songs) to really understand what to do with it. That’s why I reference so many songs throughout this book. You don’t need to look up and learn every single song I mention, but try to play through a few examples every time you learn a new concept. You don’t have to learn every song in its entirety, either. If I reference a song because it features a specific strum pattern, then just focus on playing that part of it. If my focus is on a particular technique, then just play through the part that features it.
Part I
Getting Started with Guitar Rhythm and Technique
For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.
In this part . . .
Find out how to use a metronome as a pacesetter and to develop rock-solid timing.
Get to know the most basic parts of the music staff so that you can find your way around a lead sheet.
Work with note values, rests, and time signatures to play strum patterns and develop your rhythm-guitar skills.
Chapter 1
Rhythm and Technique in a Nutshell
In This Chapter
Getting an overview of rhythm and technique
Access the audio tracks and video clips at www.dummies.com/go/guitarrhythmtechnique
In this chapter, I explain why it’s beneficial for you to develop your sense of rhythm and sharpen your technique. I also give you an overview of the different topics you explore as you work through this book. When you have an idea of what the whole program is about, you have a clearer picture of the road that lies ahead.
Recognizing the Importance of Rhythm and Technique
Every aspect of guitar playing requires some level of skill. As much as you might like to jump straight to playing familiar songs by your favorite bands and improvising like your favorite guitarists, the truth is that you need to work on developing your technique before you can achieve success on your instrument. Sure, you can pick up on things here and there as you go, but if you’re serious about getting good, why not take a more purposeful approach, one that produces better results in a shorter amount of time? The progress of many guitarists is hindered not because they lack the ability to play well, but because they don’t follow the steps necessary to progress. How can you sound as good as the next person when the next person has learned tips and tricks that you haven’t yet been introduced to?
All guitarists, regardless of style, make use of the same basic techniques. How much you use a particular technique, or how far you take it, is a matter of preference and part of what defines your sound and style.
You can get a taste of what rhythm and technique is all about by watching Video Clip 1 and listening to Audio Track 1.
Reading and Playing Basic Rhythms
Your journey to improving your guitar playing starts with a look at rhythms. Rhythm is the time in which you sound notes. It affects the feel and groove of everything you play. Developing your rhythm doesn’t require you to read music like a concert violinist, but it’s helpful to get to know the basic components of a staff and how music is rhythmically notated, which is precisely what Chapter 2 focuses on. This information will not only help you to improve your strumming, but also prepare you to read the slash notation commonly used in performance charts.
Developing Your Strumming Technique
In this book, you work with some aspects of standard notation strictly as a means to improve your guitar playing. Seeing how measures of music are subdivided, counted, and strummed will take the guesswork out of your rhythm playing and help you get your pickstrokes in order.
Aside from dissecting the strum patterns used in popular music, you work with developing essential rhythm guitar skills such as floating, resting, damping, scratching, and accenting. These techniques contribute to the feel and sound of a rhythm part and help you to develop a strong groove whether you’re playing folky acoustic guitar songs, electric rock rhythms, or funky chord comps. Various rhythms, strum patterns, and strumming techniques are covered in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.
Honing Your Fretting-Hand Techniques
There is far more to the left hand (or the right hand if you’re a lefty) than simply fretting notes on the fretboard. Guitarists use fretting-hand fingers to hammer into notes as well as pull off, slide, and bend. These techniques, called articulations, help you execute passages, produce unique sounds, and be more expressive. In order to advance as a player and be successful as a musician, you need to develop these performance skills and know how they’re notated in a guitar score. You work with articulations at length in Chapter 7.
In addition to developing technique, you also need to know how to play to your strengths. Perhaps some of your struggles are caused by a belief that there are “proper” and “correct” ways that things should be played on guitar. The truth is, your hands don’t work in exactly the same way as someone else’s hands, and sometimes you need to explore unconventional ways to fret and finger chord shapes and scale patterns in order to find what best suits you. You get started with this process in Chapter 6.
Honing Your Picking-Hand Techniques
There is far more to the right hand (or the left hand if you’re a lefty) than simply brushing the strings. To reach any level of proficiency with guitar, you need to develop the techniques of picking with a flatpick (also known as a plectrum) and plucking with the fingers.
Skilled players alternate their picks, synchronize their hands, cleanly sound notes, and mute idle strings — all at the same time. When you break down the mechanics of picking alone, you see that various means of picking exist — including alternate, sweep, economy, inside, outside, cross, and hybrid (all techniques covered in Chapter 10).
Popular music features guitar parts that are played using both a pick and fingers. All guitarists put down the pick from time to time and opt to pluck strings using fingers. Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” one of the most famous guitar compositions ever, opens with a fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Many folk-inspired songs, like “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, are propelled by rhythmic patterns that are fingerpicked, not strummed.
Using fingers also lends well to styles where chords and melodies are played together. In some cases, a flatpick is held and used together with fingers for a hybrid of the two methods. In other cases, the picking hand is used to slap the strings and produce percussive sounds. All these techniques are explored in Chapter 11.
Using Whammy Bars
Playing guitar isn’t always about manipulating the strings with your hands. Sometimes a piece of hardware is involved, like a tremolo system, which is a spring-loaded bridge that is used to add vibrato, as well as dive away from and scoop into notes. It’s what Stevie Ray Vaughan used to add mellow vibrato on his song “Lenny,” and what Jimi Hendrix used to conjure up the sounds of bombs and ambulance sirens in his Woodstock performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Also called a whammy bar, the arm that extends from a tremolo system can be pushed and pulled to create faux-slide guitar sounds with notes that slide up and down, into and out of pitch. All these techniques are laid out for you in Chapter 12.
Playing Slide Guitar and Using Open Tunings
Sometimes guitarists don’t fret notes in the normal manner of pressing the strings down to the fretboard using their fingertips; instead, they use a glass or metal object to slide along the tops of the strings. Think of the signature guitar riff at the beginning of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” or anything by Bonnie Raitt. These objects, called slides, are usually worn over a fretting-hand finger, and their use is commonplace in popular music.
One of the things that helps to facilitate the use of a slide is an alternate tuning (anything that differs from standard tuning). Slide players usually opt to tune the strings so that the open strings produce a chord like E major or G major. These tunings can be used with or without a slide. You get to know them in Chapter 9.
Getting Your Practice In
Any good book on rhythm and technique provides exercises useful for getting the most out of your practice time. Throughout this book, you come across countless figures to rehearse and use for developing your newfound skills. Chapter 13 is geared toward reviewing and running down your rhythms, and it does so in a manner that will make you feel more confident the next time you’re called to perform a part by reading it off a rhythm chart. In Chapter 14, melodic patterns are introduced. Sometimes called scale sequences or picking patterns, these patterns not only provide melodic ideas that are useful when improvising and composing, but also serve as some of the best exercises to sharpen your picking, fretting, and hand synchronization.
Chapter 2
Getting to Know the Music Staff and Traveling through Time
In This Chapter
Finding the beat
Playing quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes
Getting to know time signatures
Access the audio tracks and video clips at www.dummies.com/go/guitarrhythmtechnique
In this chapter, you take your first baby steps toward reading and playing rhythms. You get to know the music staff and some of its basic components. You begin playing quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, dots, and ties, and work with time signatures and metronomes. All this information is elementary-level stuff and, honestly, not very exciting, but you need to know it in order to play the much cooler strum patterns and rhythmic ideas in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.
Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse
Before you even take a look at rhythms on a staff, you get to know how time works in music. Every song is guided by a steady pulse. The pulse itself is not always present in the music — that is, it’s not normally assigned to an instrument to play — but everything in the music follows it and it holds everything together. Musicians are seen internalizing this pulse by tapping their feet, nodding their heads, or rocking and swaying their bodies.
Players are introduced to the pulse during a count-in or count-off, when a band leader calls out numbers prior to the start of a song. This counting serves three purposes:
It establishes the
tempo
of a song (how fast or slow the music moves along).
It indicates the
time signature
(how the music is segmented and counted).
It cues the players to all start together (preventing train wrecks).
When a pulse is established, the band members keep it silently in their heads and use it as a guide while playing their parts.
Although pulses are usually internalized, musicians often use mechanical and electronic devices to keep a steady pulse for their reference. A metronome is any device that produces a regular, metrical sound. The sound is a tick, click, beep, or any other, usually percussive, sound that is clearly audible during performance and distinguishable from the instrumentation. Whatever sound is used, musicians commonly refer to it as the click.
When a click track is in use during a live performance or recording session, it’s piped to musicians via headphones so that it isn’t heard by the listeners and doesn’t interfere with the actual music. In this day and age, aside from keeping the time steady, click tracks are often necessary to sync live performances to additional audio, video, lights, lasers, heck, even explosions! Because drummers are the timekeepers of the bands, and other instrumentalists follow their lead, click tracks are often added only to the drummers’ headphone mixes.
In the old days, a metronome consisted of an adjustable weight on the end of an inverted pendulum rod. You may have seen one of these pyramid-shaped mechanical devices sitting on top of a piano. The pendulum swings back and forth at a specified rate, while a mechanism inside the metronome produces a clicking sound with each oscillation. Nowadays, metronomes keep time and produce sounds electronically. Stand-alone, electronic metronomes are similar in size and appearance to electronic guitar tuners. Metronomes also come built into keyboards, drum machines, and music-recording software programs. Even some guitar amps, particularly the digital variety, offer a metronome feature. You can download metronome apps and use them on your smartphone or tablet. Prerecorded metronome clicks, called click tracks, are available on CD or as MP3 and WAV downloads at various tempos.
You can hear a sample metronome sound in Audio Track 2.
You work with metronome click tracks throughout all of Guitar Rhythm & Technique For Dummies — some provided for you in the audio and video examples, and others that you need to generate with your own device. If you don’t have a metronome, buy or borrow one now!
When figures in this book don’t include tempo markings, that means the tempos aren’t important and you can play at any rate that’s comfortable for you.
Drawn and Quartered
The pulse I mention in the previous section is commonly thought of and counted in groups of four. This is why a count-in is called out as “One, two, three, four.” In music, each pulse is called a beat and each group of four is called a measure or a bar. Each of the four beats in a measure takes up one-quarter of it, just as four quarters make a dollar. In written music, these quarter notes (formally referred to as crotchets) are symbolized with a filled-in oval note head and a straight, flagless stem. Figure 2-1 shows an example of four bars of quarter notes.
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Figure 2-1: Quarter notes.
Click tracks often feature a unique sound on the first of every four clicks. This reminds players that the music is in a 4/4 time signature and helps them keep track of beat one, the first beat of each new measure.
In the following sections, you get to know the components of a music staff, begin to read basic rhythms, and deal with ways in which written music is simplified for guitarists.
If you would like to make your own guitar tablature and notation, get the program GuitarPro (www.guitar-pro.com) or Sibelius (www.sibelius.com).
Rhythmic notation
Sometimes using full-blown standard musical notation isn’t necessary, and an alternate style of notation called rhythmic notation is used to simplify a score, especially when the score is relied upon mainly for its rhythmic markings. In rhythmic notation, the oval note heads are converted to slashes that are centered on the middle staff line; in some cases, only one staff line is used, as shown in Figure 2-2. You work with mainly rhythmic notation throughout the sections of this book that focus on rhythm.
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Figure 2-2: Rhythmic notation.
Beats per minute
The first thing you see in the upper-left corner of Figure 2-2 is a small quarter note followed by an equal sign and the number 80. This indicates the tempo with the number 80 indicating that the quarter notes are played at 80 beats per minute (BPM). The higher the BPM, the quicker the pulse and tempo. The lower the BPM, the slower the pulse and tempo. 60 BPM is a quarter note every second. 30 BPM is a quarter note every two seconds. 120 BPM is a quarter note every half second. Don’t bother getting your stopwatch out to determine the proper tempo for 80 BPM — that’s what your metronome is for! All metronomes operate by adjusting and setting the BPM.
Time signature
The next thing you see in Figure 2-2 is a fraction, with a 4 over a 4. That’s the time signature. The number on the bottom tells you how many beats are in each measure, and the number on top tells you what kind of note value gets counted as one beat. In this case, there are four beats to a measure and quarter notes are counted as the beats. No surprise here — you know that there are four quarter notes per measure, but in some cases, which you explore a little later in this section and again in Chapter 5, measures are divided by less or more than four beats, and another note value, such as the eighth note, is counted as the beat. For now, though, you stick with a 4/4 time signature, also known as common time and sometimes indicated with a c symbol rather that the 4-over-4 fraction.
Bar lines
The next thing to notice in Figure 2-2 are the bar lines, which are the vertical lines separating each measure. The double bar line followed by a thicker bar line at the end signifies — you guessed it — the end!
Chords
The last thing to notice about Figure 2-2 is the letter A above the first beat of the first measure. This indicates what pitch or chord to play. I chose A just to give you something to play. At this time, it’s not important what type of A chord you play, so you can play any type including an open A chord, an A barre chord, or an A power chord. You can even play just the root, A, using the fifth fret of the sixth string, or the open fifth string.
Each quarter note in Figure 2-2 corresponds to a click from a metronome or click track. You can set your device to 80 BPM and practice playing along by strumming the A at precisely the same time as each click, or go back to and follow Audio Track 2.
All the examples in this chapter are played using an A chord, but you can try practicing them on your own with a metronome using any type of note or chord you like.
Give it a rest
Of equal importance to knowing when to play is knowing when not to play. A period of silence is called a rest. A quarter note rest looks like a vertical squiggly line and is equal in duration to a quarter note: one beat. Figure 2-3 features four bars of quarter-note rests. Each rest corresponds to a click and signifies that you keep quiet. Just to be sure that you’re on the right track (so to speak), resting doesn’t mean that the pulse stops, it means that you keep quiet while the beats and measures continue to progress.
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Figure 2-3: Quarter-note rests.
In Figure 2-4, you begin to play something with rhythmic variation to it. Here you sound A (in any manner you like) for each quarter note, and you silence the strings for every quarter-note rest. During periods of rest, you can cut off the string vibrations by lifting your fretting-hand fingers slightly from the fretboard, lowering a part of your picking hand onto the strings, or a combination of both.
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Figure 2-4: Quarter notes and rests 80 BPM.
Notice at the end of Figure 2-4 that the double bar line has two dots to the left of it. That’s a repeat sign, and it directs you back to the beginning for another pass. You hear Figure 2-4 in Audio Track 3. After the repeat, I drop out and let the click track resume for some time, giving you an opportunity to practice by yourself.
When you get the hang of following Figure 2-4, you can try longer examples at faster tempos. Figure 2-5 (Audio Track 4) mixes quarter notes with quarter-note rests for a full 16 measures, with the rest placed on a different beat in every set of four bars, and all at a new tempo of 90 BPM. Figure 2-6 (Audio Track 5) further mixes the quarter notes and rests and at a rate of 100 BPM. All three audio tracks leave enough click track at the end for you to practice on your own.
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Figure 2-5: Quarter notes and rests at 90 BPM.
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Figure 2-6: Quarter notes and rests at 100 BPM.
Knowing the half of it
You can play one beat at a time, but what happens if you want to sustain a note for a longer period of time? One option is to play a half note. As the name implies, a half note takes up half a measure, or two beats. Half notes look like hollowed-out quarter notes. The half-note rest, a filled-in rectangle sitting on top of the middle line of the musical staff, or in the middle of the line in my slash notation examples, takes up two beats as well (see Figure 2-7 and play along with Audio Track 6).
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Figure 2-7: Half notes and rests at 100 BPM.
Don’t let the presence of only two notes in each measure of Figure 2-7 throw you off. There are still four beats in each measure. The difference is that each half note sustains for two beats, half the measure. So, this means that you must count two beats or tap your foot twice in order to keep track of the beats. Many guitar players keep time by continuing the up-and-down motion of their strumming hand and skipping over the strings during periods when the notes are to sustain. You want to stay on beat during periods of rest, too.
When you play a half note, don’t play on the first beat and rest in silence on the second. Instead, play on the first beat and sustain through the second. In music, notes continue to sustain through their full value, until you’re called to play another note or rest. You’re only silent when playing a rest.
The whole enchilada
Next, you work with a type of note that gets all four beats of a measure, the whole note. In addition to being hollow, whole notes are stemless. The whole-note rest is a filled-in rectangle sitting below the line (see Figure 2-8; Audio Track 7). As you play whole notes, be sure to keep track of the sustained beats by counting, tapping, or keeping your strumming hand in motion while skipping over the strings. You want to stay on beat during periods of rest, too, so keep track of the pulse in some way.
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Figure 2-8: Whole notes and rests at 100 BPM.
