My Music And Song's

Posts Tagged ‘Music’

Rhythm is a vital aspect of popular music. In fact, it is one of the things that makes popular music popular. Rhythm is fundamental to human consciousness. In the womb, we grow to the beat of our mother’s heart. Everyday activities have rhythm  walking, or tapping our fingers on a table. Rhythm can be intoxicating, and it can carry people out of themselves. Armies march to the sound of drums, and some religious rituals have used drums to assist with the inducing of trance and altered states of consciousness. The overtly rhythmic nature of rock music itself was characterised by some critics in the 1950s as primitive, a reversion to the jungle.

In classical music, the beat is implicit. A conductor signals the beats with waves of a baton, but rarely do classical pieces have a percussion instrument marking every beat. Percussion is deployed at specific moments in order to accent a theme or a dynamic change. By employing the drum kit (and, more recently, the drum machine), popular music has insisted on making the beat explicit. This is part of its long established connection with dance. In any music intended for dancing, which much popular music always has been, rhythm is obviously important. But a catchy rhythm can do more than just set your feet tapping it can be an important part of what makes a song memorable.

In the Christian era, the guitar is mentioned in two forms in the thirteenth century: the Latin guitar and the Moorish guitar. Both are illustrated in beautiful miniatures in the manuscript “Cantigas de Santa Maria” attributed to Alfonso the Wise of Spain. Of the two, the Latin guitar is closer to the figure-eight shape of the guitar as it developed in Spain and Italy. In early sixteenth-century Spain, the vihuela became the instrument of choice for the serious musician. The vihuela was in fact an early form of the guitar, with six pairs of strings. Vihuela music may be played without alteration on the modern guitar.

The only significant difference was the pairing of strings to produce a stronger sound, comparable to the 12-string guitar of today. The vihuela was played with the fingers, and a considerable repertoire of music existed for it in the notation form known as “tablature.” The tuning was like that of the Renaissance lute, which in the rest of Europe was considered the “King of Instruments” and whose music is now a fertile source for guitarists.

At the same time, a smaller guitar, first with four and then with five sets of strings (known as courses), developed as a less sophisticated instrument for chording and the strumming style known as rasgueado used as accompaniment for the dance.

One of the basic principles of making guitars work in a recording is part playing. If you have played a lot of rhythm guitar or sung your songs solo, you will be accustomed to strumming chords constantly to get a full sound. If you like jamming lead guitar, you will be accustomed to having the freedom to constantly whack out endless streams of notes. Neither of these approaches will do for arranging songs.

Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music once told me, ”We had a very good producer from the second album onwards, Chris Thomas, who had worked with The Beatles, had done Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequently worked with The Sex Pistols. I learned an incredible amount from him about part playing in recording. With Chris it was: ‘Look for the gap, don’t play over the vocal, less is more.’ You learned how to position things – just as all the great Motown stuff has incredible position and texture. All the parts add up to something greater. It all locks in.”

To understand part playing requires, first, the realization that the overall sound of a mix will generate the harmony, so you don’t have to strum chords all the time. Drums and bass create rhythm, so you don’t have to keep strumming for that reason either. Sometimes all that is needed from a lead guitar during the verses is three or four well-chosen notes to add a little melodic interest between gaps in the singing. If you find your multi-track recordings feature more fragmentary guitar parts, then you’re probably on to the right thing.