Features

Rhythm

While staring at her fretboard, one of my less fortunate students once asked me: “Where is the sixteenth note on the guitar?�

I could write an entire column filled with similar statements/questions but before simply making fun at the expense of others, I would rather share some of my personal experiences (maybe equally amusing!).

When I got more into guitar playing, rhythm was the last thing on my mind. I was so fascinated by lines and chords but when it came to rhythm, I just thought it would happen by itself – or I didn’t even think about it. Luckily, an (un)fortunate series of events changed my way of thinking about rhythm.

The early years

The first uptempo swing tune I heard confused me. I had no idea what was going on rhythmically, I wasn’t familiar with this kind of drumming and actually I missed the steady backbeat! At this time (I was 12 years old, OK?) all I listened to were bands like Deep Purple or Queen.

Another eye/ear opener, was taking percussion lessons. By this time I had figured out that rhythm was not one of my strengths and that it might be a good idea to focus more on rhythm. The first exercise was to ‘walk the quarter notes’ and clap some easy rhythms simultaneously. It was basically a disaster and my coordination left much to be desired!

When I studied Jazz Education I had to choose a second instrument. The options were either flute or classical percussion. Since I was a heavy smoker at the time I picked percussion because I didn’t like the idea of not being able to smoke while practising. Anyway, my teacher repeatedly pointed out to me that my playing was a little sloppy and demanded more precision.

Once in an Improvisation class, we were asked to play a solo over an Aebersold record. The teacher recorded us and our assignment was to transcribe our own solos. This was probably my turning point: I realised that my solo was unintentionally ‘polyrhythmic’.

Later on…

I checked out all permutations (15) of sixteenth note combinations that can appear within a quarter note and applied the same concept to triplets.

I made up little rhythmic motives and played them from 1, 1e, 1+, 1e+e, and so on.

Instead of hearing the beat of the metronome on the quarter note, I tried to hear it on the second or fourth sixteenth note which can be very demanding.

Sometimes I practised polyrhythms while I was walking. My steps were the quarter notes - remember my percussion lessons – and I snapped the other part with my fingers or sung it. This exercise was easy to practise in Vienna where I grew up but almost impossible in LA (where I live now) since nobody walks here!

I programmed some loops on my drum computer: One bar click, one bar ‘empty’- these two bars running in cycle mode – in order to control my ‘time’.

I transcribed a lot of challenging music trying to be as accurate as possible.

I often got together with drummers and practised playing a steady vamp and letting the drummer solo over that. Whenever I lost it, I asked them to explain what they were playing.

Even later on…

After I had learned these basics (which you should learn to a certain extent, especially if you want to play with other people) I moved on.

I wrote some rhythmically challenging themes and sometimes I also wrote out the whole drum score for these themes.

During a solo I tried to focus on rhythmic motives, I made a conscious effort to stick to these motives and just change the notes. At this point I must recommend Scott Henderson’s second video, ‘Melodic Phrasing’. If you watch this you’ll know what I mean.

And by the way, if you have to play a lot of solos on a gig then it can get quite boring (for you and the audience!) if you just shred all the time.

You can increase the chances of interesting interplay if you feed your band with rhythmical ideas. It makes it easier for them to react, complement and develop a ‘conversation’.
The bigger your rhythmic vocabulary, the better.

There is so much material on the market that deals with rhythmic concepts so why shouldn’t a guitar player buy instructional material for drummers and apply certain ideas to his own instrument?

P.S.
Sixteenth notes ‘move so quickly’ that it is almost impossible to see them! Yes, this was my answer, sorry but I simply could not resist back then…

28th March 2005
© Alex Machacek

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