Confession #32 - 16th Note Boot Camp (Part 1)

16th notes were the source of much stress and anxiety in the early days of my playing.  With time and practice, I've come to grips with them.  In this confession, we'll work on some exercises to help you get comfortable with 16th notes.


Single Notes vs. Strumming

In general, you are going to encounter 16th notes in two scenarios.

1. As part of a series of single notes.  See for example, the lead lines in One Minute Jam (Confession #26 - One Minute Jam!).
2. As part of a strumming pattern.  See for example, the rhythm guitar part in One Minute Jam (Confession #25 - Fret Hand Muting!).

For either of these to sound good, you must be able to play the underlying rhythm correctly.


Right Hand vs. Left Hand

The ability play the underlying rhythm correctly is primarily the job of your right hand.  Whether fingerpicking, hybrid picking or using a pick, its generally your right hand that causes the strings to sound (ignoring for now phrasing techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, etc.).

The ability to finger the single notes or chords correctly is the job of your left hand.  Your left hand has to have the dexterity and speed to finger the notes before the right hand plays them.

The focus of the exercises that follow is on 16th note rhythm training, so they will be developing your right hand's sense of rhythm.

You can use any of the various warm-up exercises and finger independence exercises in previous confessions to work on development of your left hand's speed and dexterity.


Basic Training

This week we'll start with some exercises that put one pair of 16th notes in a measure, the rest of which is filled with steady 8th notes.  Below the exercises is an audio only YouTube video which demonstrates each of the exercises, and gives you something to play along with to practice.

The demonstrations are at 60 beats per minute. Yes, this is quite slow.  Once you've mastered the exercises at 60 bpm, you can pick up the tempo.  Note that you should only increase the tempo 2 - 4 bpm at at time.  Get comfortable at the new slightly faster tempo before increasing it any further.  Big leaps in tempo will generally just lead to mistakes and frustration.

When practicing the exercises without the video, use a metronome! (see Confession #5 - Use a Metronome!)

You may want to apply a bit of palm muting when playing the exercises so that the string doesn't ring as much (see Confession #20 - Palm Muting! (Part 1)).


Counting

By now you are probably aware that we use the word "and" when counting measures containing eight notes.  For example, one measure of nothing but 8th notes would be counted as follows:

 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

When playing measures containing 16th notes, we add the sounds "ee" and "uh" to our repertoire.  Thus a measure of nothing but 16th notes would be counted as follows:

 1 ee & uh 2 ee & uh 3 ee & uh 4 ee & uh

Personally, I find it doesn't roll of the tongue that easily, but I've never found a better answer.  Since this is very standard, you'll need to learn it to be able to communicate with other musicians.


Picking

For all the exercises that follow, you should be using downstrokes on the beat, and on the "and" of the beat.  So for the 8th note rhythm pattern above, the picking would be like this:

 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
 d d d d d d d d

 d = downstroke

You should be using upstrokes on the "ee" and "uh" of the beat.  So for the 16th note rhythm pattern above, the picking would be like this:

 1 ee & uh 2 ee & uh 3 ee & uh 4 ee & uh
 d u  d u  d u  d u  d u  d u  d u  d u

 d = downstroke
 u = upstroke

You may be used to using alternate picking for 8th note rhythms, so it will take a bit of adjustment to get used to using strictly downstrokes for the 8th notes.


Exercise #1

The 1st exercise is just the steady 8th note rhythm pattern from above.  The purpose of the exercise is to get used to using all downstrokes for eight notes instead of alternate picking.

Exercise #1
(Click to Enlarge)

Count and pick this exercise as follows:

 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
 d d d d d d d d


Exercise #2

The 2nd exercise puts a 16th note after the "and" of each beat in the measure, one at a time.

Exercise #2
(Click to Enlarge)

Count and pick this exercise as follows:

"uh" of Beat 1

 1    & uh 2    &    3    &    4    & 
 d    d u  d    d    d    d    d    d 


"uh" of Beat 2

 1    &    2    & uh 3    &    4    & 
 d    d    d    d u  d    d    d    d 


"uh" of Beat 3

 1    &    2    &    3    & uh 4    & 
 d    d    d    d    d    d u  d    d 


"uh" of Beat 4

 1    &    2    &    3    &    4    & uh
 d    d    d    d    d    d    d    d u


Exercise #3

The 3rd exercise puts a 16th note before the "and" of each beat in the measure, one at a time.

Exercise #3
(Click to Enlarge)

Count and pick this exercise as follows:

"ee" of Beat 1

 1 ee &    2    &    3    &    4    & 
 d u  d    d    d    d    d    d    d 


"ee" of Beat 2

 1    &    2 ee &    3    &    4    & 
 d    d    d u  d    d    d    d    d 


"ee" of Beat 3

 1    &    2    &    3 ee &    4    & 
 d    d    d    d    d u  d    d    d 


"ee" of Beat 4

 1    &    2    &    3    &    4 ee & 
 d    d    d    d    d    d    d u  d 


Video

Next week we'll look at some exercises that use four 16th notes per measure.

Next Week's Confession - 16th Note Boot Camp (Part 2)

Confession #31 - Play in a Band!

Want to take your playing up a level?  There's one sure way to do it!

PLAY IN A BAND!

It can be difficult to stay motivated as a musician if all you do is noodle around on your guitar at home.  You're not letting anybody down if you watch TV instead of practicing that new song you've been working on.

 If your motivation suffers, then you don't practice as much as you should and thus your progress suffers too.

One way to kick start your motivation is to join a band!  And better yet, join a band that has an upcoming gig!  Now you have two very powerful motivators to get you to practice:

1. Not wanting to let the band down by showing up at rehearsal without knowing your part.  
2. Fear of getting up on stage at your first gig and blowing it.

One of my goals when I got serious about the guitar a few years back was to play a gig.  When I felt I was ready I signed up for a program offered by a local music shop that put me together with other musicians in a band, coached the band through 2 months of rehearsals, and had a gig at a local bar booked for end of the program.  This experience was a lot of fun and a lot of work.  It forced me to improve my playing  to be ready for the gig.

Some of the benefits that I took away from the experience were:

Learn the Whole Song

One thing that I am often guilty of is starting to learn a new song, getting bored half-way through it and never learning the whole thing.  Being in the band forced me to learn the songs all the way through.

Skip Some Notes if You Have To

For years I believed that I had to play a song exactly as it was on the record.  If I came to a part in a song that was too difficult, I would give up on the song.  Being in the band forced me to either improve my skills and nail the difficult part, or to find another way to play it by sacrificing a note or two to make it less difficult.  Giving up on the song wasn't an option as the rest of the band was relying on me.

As musicians often say, unless somebody in the audience is in a <insert band name> cover band, odds are nobody is going to notice that you skipped a note or two.

Use Your Own Rhythm Patterns if You Have To

Looking at the TAB for a song that the band wanted to try, it looked like the guitar player never used the same strumming pattern twice in the entire song!  It wasn't practical to learn and memorize all those rhythm patterns, so I came up with my own patterns for each section of the song. This simplified the arrangement to something that was manageable.

Focus on the Feel of the Song

Some of the songs we played in our gig had multiple guitar parts on the record.  Obviously I couldn't play all of the parts at the same time, so I had to customize the arrangement so as to pick and choose the parts that gave the song its feel.

Be Flexible

Even in a short 2 month program, I experienced some real band drama.  The original singer quit after only two weeks.  The original bass player quit 2 weeks before the gig.  A song that we had been working on wasn't working out so we dropped it and added a new one only two weeks before the gig.  All these events created some stress, but with a gig date looming we had to roll with the punches and focus on using the resources and time available to put on the best show we could.

Mistakes Will Happen

As we started the first song, I was fairly nervous and my hands were literally shaking.  Fortunately, it was a song that I knew really well and thus was able to play through the shakes.  However nerves did come into play on some other songs.  In one case, probably only the band noticed my mistake.  In another case, the mistake was glaringly (and embarrassingly) obvious and everyone in the bar noticed.

Mistakes will happen, but don't let them throw you.  The show's not going to stop, so jump back in and focus on the rest of the song, not your mistake.

Next Week's Confession - ???

Confession #30 - Lose the Death Grip!

Did you ever notice how much finger pressure you use when playing something your familiar and comfortable with and how much you use when learning something new or playing something difficult?  Once I started paying attention, I noticed that I used a lighter touch for the familiar and a heavy handed touch for the unfamiliar and difficult.

Lose the Death Grip!

Your guitar should be treated with the same gentle touch as you would use with your lover.  It should not be treated like it is the victim of a serial strangler in a thriller movie.

Using too much finger pressure works against you in a couple of ways.

One, pressing harder actually stretches the string a bit and changes the pitch of the fretted note slightly.  The effect is more noticeable if you've got tall frets or a scalloped fretboard.

Two, pressing too hard causes more tension in the muscles and tendons of the neighboring fingers which reduces the independence of those neighboring fingers. With less independence you're more likely to have trouble fretting notes with your other fingers.  In a nutshell, pressing too hard actually makes it harder to learn that new lick.

There are times when a lot of pressure is needed, like when your are fretting a root 6 F barre chord (see Confession #11 - Learn Root 6 Barre Chords! ).  But the general rule is that you should use as light a touch as is necessary to fret the note cleanly.

Pay attention to your finger pressure and see if you are maybe using too much.

Next Week's Confession - Play in a Band!

Confession #29 - Finger 3-4 Independence! (Exercise #3)

This week's post is a variation on the exercise in Confession #22 - Finger 3-4 Independence! (Exercise #2).

This exercise uses a similar finger/string skipping pattern, but the movement is "forward" this time and the exercise is played on strings 5 and 6.  This requires your fingers to stretch out more than when playing on strings 1 and 2 and thus presents new challenges, especially to fingers 3 and 4 which aren't as long and therefore have to stretch more.

Finger 3-4 Independence - Exercise #3
(Click to Enlarge)

For even more variation, you could play Exercise #2 on strings 5 and 6, and play Exercise #3 on strings 1 and 2.

Save on musical equipment in the American Musical Supply Outlet Zone

Next Week's Confession - Lose the Death Grip!

Confession #28 - Palm Muting (Part 2)

In Confession #20 - Palm Muting! (Part 1) we learned about palm muting and how it can be used to get a chunkier sound and to create rhythm patterns by selectively muting certain beats in a measure.

In this confession, we'll learn about another cool application for palm muting, percussive slaps.

Percussive Slaps 

If you strum a chord and mute the strings with your palm of your strumming hand at the same time, you get a percussive sound from the guitar that has very little tonal content.  The resulting sound is different from the percussive sound produced when using fret hand muting (see Confession #25 - Fret Hand Muting!).

This technique is very useful when you are strumming your acoustic and singing a song.  You can use palm muting on beats 2 and 4 to simulate the percussive accent that a snare drum provides when playing with a drummer.

It takes a little bit of practice to get this right.  Strum the chords normally, but when you get to beat 2 and 4 rotate your hand outward a bit so that your palm comes down on the strings near the bridge at the same time that you strum them.

Strumming a "1 and 2  3 and 4" pattern like the first part of the video below should come without too much difficulty.

The challenge comes when you switch to a "1 and 2 and 3 and 4" strumming pattern like the second part of the video.  Because you have to change your hand position to apply the palm muting on beats 2 and 4, its a bit tricky to get a proper upstroke on the "and of beat 2" immediately after applying the palm mute.  Like all things with the guitar, it will come with practice.

In the third part of the video, I play through the G-Em-C-D7 chord progression from Confession #5 - Use a Metronome!  and Confession #7 - Use Pivot Chords! using a "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" strumming pattern, and apply this technique.

(Sorry for the crappy video. WinXP patch KB 2834904 was released by Microsoft on July 10th and has spawned numerous complaints.  Among those complaints is the top half of videos being black, which is exactly what happens when I create the movie in Windows Movie Maker.  Once Microsoft fixes this problem I'll redo the movie.)

Next Week's Confession - Finger 3-4 Independence! (Ex. #3)