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Chapter 5: Positioning the Right Hand for Rhythm and Lead
Shuffling the Beats with
Syncopated Strumming
After you develop a feel strumming in different combinations of eighths, quarters,
and 16ths (which come four per beat, or twice as fast as eighth notes),
you can increase the rhythmic variation to these various groupings by applying
syncopation. Syncopation is the disruption or alteration of the expected
sounds of notes. In blues rhythm playing, you can apply syncopation by staggering
your strum and mixing up your up- and downstrokes to strike different
parts of the beats. By doing so, you let the agents of syncopation — dots,
ties, and rests — steer your rhythmic strumming to a more dramatic and
interesting course.
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A bit of notation: Dots that
extend and ties that bind
A dot attached to a note increases its rhythmic value by half the original
length. So a dot attached to a half note (two beats) makes it three beats long.
A dotted quarter note is one and a half beats long or the total of a quarter
note plus an eighth note.
A tie is a curved line that connects two notes of the same pitch. The value of
the tied note adds to the original, so that only the first note is sounded, but
the note is held for the duration of the two notes added together.
Figure 5-7 shows a chart of how dots and ties alter the standard note values
of eighth, quarter, and half notes.
Syncopation: Playing with dots and ties
So how do dots and ties actually make syncopation in a musical context?
There are two progressions — one in a straight-eighth feel and another in a
shuffle — that you can practice playing in this section. They both have
common syncopation figures used in the blues.
The normal flow of down- and upstrokes is interrupted in syncopation, so it’s
important to remember which stroke direction to play a note to avoid getting
your strums out of sync.
TEAM LinG