Constructive criticism on my rhythm playing

Samuel · August 2009

Michael Horowitz wrote:

But it's rarely used by any pros today....most use a fast upstroke or no upstroke at all. Fapy is the one guy that comes to mind...he always favored the pre-war approach. But other then him it's hard to find many playing the pre-war style.

But then I guess the question is, are you trying to play like a pro or just play the style that you like

I kind of like the older style a little more over the modern, no up-stroke style, but I also figure that's something that can change, and it's good to know how to play the shorter/no-upstroke as well.

It's just...most of us probably won't ever be pro, so it seems like the best idea is to play what we like the most

harlemjoys · August 2009

The Los wrote:

Hey man, your rhythm sounds like it's on the right track to me. Like Michael and Dennis said, there's only a couple minor things holding you back that will be ironed out in time. I would agree you're off to a solid start; at least you 'get' the concepts.

It's funny you guys bring up the pre-war style. I play this way almost exclusively and I think it is becoming, sadly, a lost art. Whenever I go to a jam people will come up to me and say, "wow man, what were you doing? That sounded cool!" It's like they've never listened to the old Django recordings. Those are the songs that brought me into this music so that must be why I like the sound so much.

I wish more of the modern players would use this approach but I'm just old-fashioned I guess.

Totally agree, it's always more interesting when you go into a jam and you hear all different types of pompe in there, as long as everyone is on time and they all mesh together it's all good...

bohemewarbler · July 2018

You should check out this Anniversary song playback. Rhythm section (from Selmer #607 Vol III Anniversary Songs) featuring David Gastine and Ghali Hadefi (rhythm guitars) and William Brunard (double bass).

Pompier · July 2018

I started a thread about learning this style of rhythm a few weeks ago and even posted this very video. Since then I've made a pretty useful discovery: if you want to learn playing it at this speed, you should check out Denis' playalongs at DC Music School. The slow, beginner playalongs may not sound like it, but they are based on same technique. When you can manage it at 150 bpm, pick a faster playalong to work with. By the time you get to this tempo, you will have arrived at your destination. This one is a little snappier and less smooth than the one above, but it's basically the same style:

NylonDave · July 2018

I don't like playalong tracks much. When people sing ,if they are musical, and most people are until they pick up a guitar, they tend to follow the dynamics implicit in the tune. No musical person sings every note in a tune at the same dynamic or with the same timbre.

People talk a lot about how to play mechanically well, it is easy to talk about that.

There are a lot of people who learn to play 'well' or 'correctly' and turn up at jams and sap the soloist's will to live by not responding to their dynamics or to the dynamics implicit in the tune.

They are playing 'correctly'. NEVER try and play correctly, only ever try and play well. It is actually much easier to play well, and much nicer for the people you are playing with.

SING the tune and note note that you will naturally and musically shape phrases by getting louder and softer. Play along and try and match that dynamic journey.

This tune starts with an awful lot of bars on the dominant chord. I never want to hear even as many as two bars of one chord where one bar sounds like the last. Computers can do that, it sounds like sh1t. Don't try and play like that.

Sing the tune as you comp and try and match the dynamic journey that your voice makes by MATCHING it with your dynamics on guitar.

An even better idea would be to find someone who plays music beautifully and ask for lessons. If they are good then the advice that they give you will resemble in no way online discussion. They will encourage to listen honestly and to allow your musicality to over rule any facile and, as this thread illustrates, completely arbitrary idea of correctness.

Never play correctly, only ever try and play well.

Ok, I've gotten that off my chest, time to get back to business as usual.

Maybe you need a different plectrum.

D.

Pompier · July 2018

I think imitating playalongs is helpful for developing the mechanical ability to get the needed sounds out of the instrument, but I also think that it's impossible to learn good rhythm playing that way. Even beyond responding to a player's dynamics, the basic rhythm of la pompe isn't a stand-alone musical effect. Its swing comes in large part from its interaction with the basic rhythms of the solo. I recently signed up at Joscho Stephan's website and discovered that it has a great feature called "play with Joscho", where you're supposed to fill in the rhythm part. That was an eye- (or ear-) opening experience right away. When the track ended and I could hear myself clearly I realized that my ear led me to a very close approximation of Joscho's own rhythm track, which I hadn't been able to do trying to imitate it just a few minutes earlier in isolation.

Scoredog · July 2018

Emulating good rhythm players play along and matching it will give some insight into the approach. Record yourself (even on an iPhone) once you think you have it matched, see if you really do or not, take it from there.

bohemewarbler · July 2018

Another technique that I use is to import a rhythm track that you want to emulate into Garageband and add your own rhythm track along side it. You can compare the audio similarity by listening with your ears as well as compare your visual graphic that Garageband provides to the graphic you're wanting to emulate. This helps you both hear and see what might be your weak points. To adjust your playing, you want to match your playing both by ear and by sight.

This Adrien Moignard example can be useful if you want to emulate his rhythm style, since it's just Adrien on rhythm guitar and no soloing. You can see that there is a strong difference in Adrien's beat 1 and 3 to his 2 and 4, yet each beat is uniformly steady and precise. (I'm not referring to what can be seen in the video but what can be seen in Garageband as it captures the sound in graphic waves.)

bohemewarbler · July 2018

Of course rhythm is not a stand alone event, but if your rhythm style is not good in that it doesn't fit in with this genre, then it's not going to work for the soloists. The better the rhythm player on the fundamentals, the better chance that it's going to mesh well with the soloists playing in this style and enhance the music considerably. Christiaan van Hemert points out what he considers to be the top 3 rhythm mistakes and how to fix them in this video. The 3rd mistake is what he calls "having a weird rhythm style."