Nashville Guitar Guru | Guitar Lessons in Nashville, TN

Dave Isaacs, Nashville guitar guru and master teacher

Musicianship

Be a real guitar hero: 5 ways to play better rhythm

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When you think “guitar hero” what do you picture? (Look out, the clichés are flying already…cue the fog machine!)

I’ve had many students start their first lesson by saying that they’re “not a guitar player” and don’t really need to be “good”. But you don’t have to be a guitar hero to be a good guitar player: being a good player means having the ability to deliver what your music needs. A good player plays with authority, it doesn’t matter how simple or complex the music is. That authority comes through practice, gradually building confidence and skill. The most essential skill is good rhythm.

Most players spend far more time playing rhythm than lead, no matter how skilled they might be at playing solos. (Then there’s the way the role of the guitar has changed in contemporary music…guitar solos and virtuosity are almost an anachronism). But all music, from any era, is about rhythm. Guitar is a rhythm instrument. Virtuoso guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen had great rhythm, and so did John Lennon and Johnny Cash.

A great rhythm riff can be as much of a hook as any soaring chorus, and just as powerful:

So with all that said…if you “only” play rhythm, own it and learn to do it well. Here are 5 things you should make a priority to improve your rhythm playing:

1. Develop good timing.

Practice with a metronome, with drum loops, with songs you love, and with other people. You should treat rhythm as a musical skill that deserves attention on its own. Learn how to FEEL the beat, not just count.

2. Learn to strum with fluidity and confidence.

Too many people just focus on the ups and downs and never notice how stiff their playing is. This is a topic I’ve written extensively on, check out my “Strum Secrets” posts for valuable tips.

3. Grow your chord vocabulary.

This might mean finally mastering those frustrating barre chords, or learning new “color chords” to add flavor and interest. You’ll keep on using the basic open chords for your entire playing life, but there are so many other things you can learn to do and many of them aren’t difficult at all.

4. Play songs.

The whole song, beginning to end. If you don’t sing, sing anyway – or at least in your head – to make sure you get through the whole thing. Can you hold the tempo all the way though? Is it challenging to maintain a rhythm pattern for three or four minutes? These are basics that create a foundation for everything else you learn to play.

5. Play with others.

It’s one thing to be able to play along with a metronome, but it’s something else entirely to fit into a group and groove. Play simple parts and simple songs to start with…you don’t want to be distracted by the guitar part. Concentrate on being a part of the whole, and how your part relates to the others. After a while you won’t have to think so hard and you’ll be able to just feel it.

Why Does It Hurt When I Play?

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I should say at the outset that this is not meant to be medical advice. Serious chronic pain should be addressed by a professional. But understanding some basic mechanics can help you tell the difference between a signal to change something and an impending or developing injury.

I’m not talking about the sore fingertips beginners develop as they work on building calluses. This can be frustrating, but not a sign of a deeper problem. Sometimes switching to lighter strings can really help with this, or tuning the guitar down the ease the string tension. But the fact is, calluses take time to build and the fingertips might hurt some in the process. This is normal and to be expected.

Where do you feel it?

The most common places people feel pain from playing guitar are the base of the thumb, the wrist, and the forearm.

Most of the time to pain starts as simple muschand painle fatigue. There are lots of small muscles in the hand and arm, and intricate work like guitar playing can work them harder than your body is used to. You may have been told that you need to just “push through it”, but I disagree. “No pain no gain” may apply to building strength in the large muscles of the body, but the hands are a different story. If you’re being told to “just press harder” – and I rarely say this – find a new teacher.
There are three main factors I’ve observed that contribute to hand and arm pain, and fortunately there are simple solutions than can help.

1. Find a more natural hand position.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from a student that a teacher told them to just grip harder. Some people even use the word “grip” to describe chord shapes. This is bad advice, plain and simple. Your goal is to develop relaxed control, and that doesn’t come from working harder. The best approach is ergonomic: using the mechanics of the hand to produce maximum force with minimal effort.

Provided that your guitar is set up properly, the best and clearest tone will come from an efficient hand position. Your finger should rest on the strings, not squeeze them. Pay attention to the shape of your wrist and fingers. The strongest natural position is a straight wrist with slightly curled fingers:


Allow the thumb to fall where it wants to, and don’t worry about whether it extends over the top of the neck – it usually will. Remember that a lot of the specifics here depend on the proportions of your hand and the size and shape of the neck…there’s no absolute “right way”. But if you feel like your hand is making a claw like the Wicked Witch of the West, you’re definitely bending everything too much!

If the notes aren’t ringing clearly, make an adjustment to your hand or wrist. Let the fingers fall as naturally as possible on the strings. As a rule, your fingers will be more curled on the thinner treble strings and more extended when you reach for the thicker basses. Your wrist should be basically straight but not rigid. Think of the wrist as a hinge that can move forward or back. Play with this until you find the most relaxed position. If you feel compression or pain in the wrist, you’re probably bending it too far. Make sure your guitar neck is at least slightly elevated, that will help.

2. Playing with chronic tension.

Most of us carry at least some amount of tension in our neck and shoulders. This can severely limit the flexibility and strength of your hands: the small muscles of the hand are supported by the larger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder. It’s amazing what a difference it can make in your strumming when you pay attention to your shoulder rather than your hand! You may find that you raise one shoulder higher than the other, or that you rotate your upper body in awkward ways. When we’re focused on the hands, it’s easy to ignore that fact that they’re attached to the rest of you.

Another problem area is the forearms. If your hand position is tight, your forearm muscles are likely to tighten up too. This is a problem for both hands: too much grip in the fretting hand, or too much tightness in the strumming wrist and arm. The forearms should be light and relaxed: let the support come from the upper arm, and think of the forearm as the way to move the hands. The movement needs to initiate from the fingertips…think of the forearm as a hollow tube, led by the fingers.

3. Overpracticing or mindless practicing

Put simply: take breaks and rest your hands between practice segments. DON’T mindlessly go for the same quick movement over and over. Execute the movement, relax and refocus, do it again, relax and refocus. These moments of “letting go” really do help the muscles stay more relaxed. Then every fifteen minutes or so, put the guitar down for a moment. Be aware of your posture, too…if you’re slouching on the couch, you’re probably making your hands work harder than if you were standing with a strap or seated upright.

If you’re a performer and your hands hurt after a show, try to recognize if you’re bearing down harder than you should when you play. Anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil and Aleve are helpful if your muscles are sore, and soaking the hands can help too. There are also various topical remedies that can help. But remember that these are treatments for the symptom, not the problem. Be as aware as you can, manage the pain when it flares up, and get medical advice if it persists.

What about warmups?

If you’re practicing properly – starting off slowly, relaxed, and controlled – then the warmup will happen naturally. There can be value in gentle hand and finger stretching, but it’s also easy to overdo these and hurt more than help. Think of your first few minutes when you pick up the guitar as time to get reacquainted. Almost anything can be an effective warmup if you’re paying attention and not rushing through it. On the other hand, “warmup” exercises can do real damage if you do them too quickly, and especially if there’s tension in the hand when you do them. Pay attention to what your body tells you!

The Perpetual Beginner: how to use a capo as a tool, not a cheater!

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Capos are for cheaters, right?

Wrong! Yes, you can use a capo to make a song easier to play by allowing you to use more comfortable chords, or to raise or lower the vocal range of the melody. But what you’re actually doing is transposing: either actually changing the key of the song, or allowing you to play in one key while sounding in another. This lets you be much more flexible and versatile on guitar!

Do The Math

When we play a song, the chords have a specific relationship to each other based on the position of each chord’s root note in the scale. We can number the seven notes of the C major scale like this:

C=1     D=2     E=3     F=4     G=5     A=6     B=7

We number the chords the same way. So in the key of C, a C chord is 1, while a G chord is 5. The numbers work the same way no matter what key we’re in. Even more importantly, the relationships have a consistent sound no matter what key we’re in. We can really exploit the way this works on guitar by using a capo. Try this exercise:

Play an open position C chord, followed by a G, then back to C.

Place your capo on the 3rd fret and play A – E – A.

Move the capo up the the 5th fret and play G – D – G.

Move the capo to the 10th fret and play D – A – D.

You should notice that although the notes get higher, the chords sound very much the same. This is because the C and G chords can actually be played in different places all over the neck. The capo essentially makes the neck shorter and the pitch of each string higher. So when you play that A chord with the capo at the 3rd fret, the notes sound higher than they would be if you played it without the capo. The capo at the third fret raises the pitch of every note by three semitones or half-steps. So the notes you’re hearing are actually the notes of a C chord. We’re just using what we might call an A shape to reach them. The same applies to the next two examples.

If you do the math and count your way from A to E, G to D, and D to A, you’ll notice that you get the same number each time: 1 and 5. So what you’ve done is play a 1 – 5 – 1 progression in what looks like four different keys, but actually sounds in the same key each time.

It’s about the sound!

Now consider that if you learn more chord relationships and capo positions, you can play in every key in multiple places! Each capo position has a distinctive sound. In fact, the sound of some songs is defined by the use of the capo.

The Secret Formula!

Here’s a simple formula to help you find:where to put your capo to play a specific chord, or what chord is actually sounding.

There are three variables here, and if you know two you can find the third:

1. What fret is the capo on?
2. What chord shape are you playing?
3. What chord is actually sounding?
The formula works like this:

Chord shape + capo position = sounding chord.

In other words, take whatever fret the capo is on and count that number of steps up the chromatic scale (all twelve notes). This diagram will help:

 

 

Keep in mind that notes can be “spelled” as sharps or flats, which is why some notes have two names.

Let’s say you have a song in the key of F but you have trouble playing barre chords. Or maybe you just prefer the more ringing sound of the open chords. To find where to place the capo, start with the note F and count DOWN the chromatic scale to the nearest open chord name: A, C, D, E, or G. This will give you the fret number where the capo should go to make that chord shape sound as an F.

E shape = 1 half-step down from F = capo 1st fret
D shape = 3 half-steps down from F = capo 3rd fret
C shape = 5 half-steps down from F = capo 5th fret
A shape = 8 half-steps down from F = capo 8th fret
G shape = 10 half-steps down from F = capo 10th fret

Identifying the sounding chord

Conversely, let’s say you have a capo on the 3rd fret and you’re playing G, C, and D. To find what chords are actually sounding, count UP the chromatic scale three frets:

G shape + 3 half-steps = Bb
C shape + 3 half-steps = Eb
D shape + 3 half-steps = F
It will probably take some time before you really get to know the chromatic scale, but you’ll probably memorize the patterns you use most pretty quickly. After a while, you’ll be able to try out different capo positions to play the same song. If you’d like some reinforcement on the theory, check out this related post: A Crash Course in Capo Transposition.

 

And remember, sometimes we might choose a capo part because it sounds better, not just because it’s easier!

 

 

The Perpetual Beginner: the Nashville Number System, practical theory, and your capo.

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The Nashville Number System is a method of musical shorthand devised in the late 1950’s by Bill Matthews of the Jordanaires (most famous as the vocal quartet backing Elvis on his early recordings). It’s a great example of the practical use of music theory. With a little knowledge you can use the concepts behind the NNS to learn a song by ear, figure out a capo position to play in, or transpose a song to a new key.

The basic concept to understand is that a song is generally said to be “in a key”. That means that there are certain notes that are most likely to be used, and others that are likely to be omitted. The particular pattern of the notes creates a “key center”: a musical home base that determines how you hear the relationships between notes. Once this is established in your ear, you will perceive (consciously or unconsciously) that the patterns in the music will generally lead you “home” at the end of the song or sequence.

To illustrate this point, play the following 7 notes. Use the tab if you don’t know the note locations:

C    D    E    F    G    A    B

 

 

 

You’ll probably notice that the last note sounds unresolved, that the musical idea feels incomplete. You’re right! Now play this example:

C    D    E    F    G    A    B    C

 

 

The difference between the two examples is one note, but it makes all the difference! Notice how the final C note in the second example creates a sense of completion that was missing from the first one. This sense of resolution – of a return to home, to stability – is the essence of how our musical system works, and the most important conceptual meaning of the term “key” or “key center”.

Understanding this puts the math in a whole new light. The numbers we use in the Nashville Number System come from the position of a note in the scale sequence: in the key of C, C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, and so on. That’s the math. When a musician reads the number chart, they determine the chords by counting the scale tones up from note 1, and playing the chord that corresponds to the resulting letter. (There’s more to know than that, but for our purposes it’s the main thing to understand).

The trick is to realize that because of this “gravitational” property of our musical system – the sense of “pull” we feel from note 7 of the scale when it isn’t allowed to resolve to note 8 – the numbers also stand for relationships between notes and chords. Accomplished musicians know what those relationships sound like simply by looking at the numbers. No matter where we start, we know what 4 will sound like as soon as we hear 1. This is because the numbers show a relative relationship that is both mathematical and sonic, and we can learn to recognize the sound of each one.

 

So what does this mean to the perpetual beginner? You already know that a capo allows you to change the key of a song by raising the pitch of all the chords equally. This preserves the sonic and mathematical relationships between them. When you start to learn the number system and the basic layout of the guitar neck, your capo suddenly becomes a much more useful and versatile creative tool – NOT a cheater!

This is the point where we need to start memorizing some things. To keep things simple for now, let’s start with three chords in 3 keys:

C 1F 4G 5
D 1G 4A 5
G 1C 4D 5

Read from left to right and play the 3 chords in each row, ending by repeating chord 1. Try this in all 3 keys and you’ll hear the common relationship.

If you memorize the 1, 4, and 5 chords in these 3 keys, you’ll have multiple ways of playing in other keys by using the capo in different places and starting on different chords. For example, you can play 1-4-5-1 in D without the capo by just playing D-G-A-D. Now capo the 2nd fret and play C-F-G-C. Then capo the 7thth fret and play G-C-D-G. The notes are different, but the overall effect and sound are very much the same!
Obviously the specifics will take time to learn, and we’ll explore this further in subsequent posts. For now, start by memorizing the 1, 4, and 5 in the keys of C, D, and G. Experiment with different combinations of numbers, plugging in the appropriate chords. For example, 1 4 1 5 in C would be C F C G, while the same pattern in G would be G C G D. Listen for the similarity in the relationship between the chords. After a while, this becomes easy, and you can learn by hearing the those relationships instead of doing the math. Ear training is a process that takes time, but the skills are something everyone can learn.

The Perpetual Beginner: chord inventory and the horse with no name.

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How many chords do you think you know?

How many chords are there, anyway?

The average basic strummer uses a vocabulary of about eleven chords, and has probably learned quite a few more that they don’t often use or might even avoid. (Barre chords, anyone?)


If we go through the familiar open position “cowboy chords”, we get five major chords: A, C, D, E, and G. Let’s go ahead and add F to that, since it’s so common that even people who struggle with the barre forms usually have some sort of workaround for it. So that’s six. The open position only gives us 3 primary minors, though, Am, Dm, and Em. That’s nine…add a workaround version of B and B minor and there’s eleven.

 

So how many keys can you play in comfortably with eleven open position chords? First of all, we’re going to be limited to the keys that use mostly open chords to begin with. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the most commonly used chords in a major key are the 1, 4, 5, and 6. The 2 and b7 show up often as well, while the 3 is more unusual and the diminished 7 so rare in pop music that we can leave it out for now. So plug our eleven chords into this formula and we get:

Key:12m3m456mb7
A:ABmDEG
C:CDmEmFGAm
D:DEmGABmC
E:EABD
G:GAmBmCDEmF

 

Clearly, there’s a lot missing! And it’s easy to see why so many strummers opt to stay in C, D, or G and just use the capo to get around to other keys.

The truth is, though, there’s still a lot that can be done with this set of chords. A song might use chords that are outside the major key but still sound good…for example, a change from A to C goes outside the key of A but is still a common progression, as is E to G in the key of E. This chord would be considered a b3, borrowed from the relative minor key. (The C chord belongs to the key of A minor, not A major. The Beatles were masters of this kind of “mode mixture” but it’s something we hear all the time in all kinds of music).

So this leads us to three big points for the perpetual beginner:

1. Clearly, barre chords are important and a hurdle everyone needs to get over. See last week’s blog and related video for more on this subject.

2. There are probably more possible combinations of the chords you already know than you might think.

3. There’s also the entire world of “color chords”: the various kinds of 7ths, add9 and suspended chords, and others that don’t really need or even have conventional names. These are all worth adding to your vocabulary piece by piece, as you encounter them in songs.

For example, one of my favorite songs to teach an absolute beginner is the 1971 hit “A Horse With No Name” by America. It uses basically just two chords: a familiar E minor, and then this one:


This chord could be called Dadd6add9/F#, or “D six-nine over F#”, which sounds complicated. It’s not – just look at the fingering! It’s really just a D chord with the notes rearranged, plus the open high E and B strings. Try playing it after an E minor and you’ll see what a simple finger move it is: use the same two fingers for both chords, and all you need to do is move them apart and then back together.

Now, the song was actually played in an alternate tuning, so the fingerings and “voicing” are slightly different on the recording. But the basic move is very similar: all the fingers on the same fret, changing to a different set of strings and then back. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt songwriter Dewey Bunnell decided to use a “D 6-9 chord” intentionally. He was probably just messing around with tuning and fingerings and stumbled on a cool sound. Obviously it worked out well!

You can explore in a similar way. Yes, a chord dictionary is a useful tool to have around. Yes, it’s good to know the names of the chords you use. But if you’re looking to grow your vocabulary, you should ideally be doing it two ways:

1. Learn new chords and their names as they appear in songs
2. Explore! Lift a finger, move it somewhere else, or add a finger.

When you get your fingers around a sound you like, strum and listen. Visualize the shape on the fretboard, and practice “seeing” it before you plant your fingers. Don’t worry about the theory or the names yet, that will come later. Concentrate on the formation and the finger movements first. If the chord is part of a song, practice getting there from the previous chord and then getting to the next one. Move the fingers slowly and deliberately at first, the speed will come if you focus on accuracy first.

Droning or dynamic: be more compelling onstage!

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When we refer to someone as a dynamic performer, we mean that person commands attention. They draw an audience in and make a lasting impression. You might see this as pure talent, and sometimes it is. But these dynamic performers all make use of an important musical tool, also called dynamics.

“Dynamics” in music refer to degrees of volume: soft and loud sounds, and the gradations in between. In written music, “dynamic markings” indicate how loud a passage should be played: from “pp” (pianissimo, or very soft) to “ff” (fortissimo, or very loud). Actually the dynamic range for orchestral music can be even wider than that: pppp to ffff! Imagine an orchestra of a hundred musicians, and the difference between one softly played flute and the full ensemble (including brass, mind you) playing at full volume. That’s a lot of range!

An acoustic guitar is never going to match that, plugged in or not. Most acoustic instruments are capable of making more sound: a piano or violin played fortissimo can easily overwhelm most acoustic guitars. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use dynamics in your playing and performances. The trick is to recognize that since most of your audience isn’t listening with a decibel meter, loud and soft has as much to do with perception as it does with how much air is actually being pushed around. In other words, if your loudest isn’t very loud, make soft even softer. Dynamic range can expand in both directions, and the listener is going to respond to the perceived difference within the overall dynamics of the song and performance.

But there needs to be a difference. If there’s no change in dynamic throughout a performance, a listener is less likely to respond at all! You’re less likely to hold the audience’s attention if your playing is monotonous. But if your performance is full of dynamic contrasts, you’ll command attention.

In addition to the problem of playing without any dynamics at all, many perpetual beginners have one of two problems: playing consistently too hard or too lightly. The solution lies in the topic of some of my most recent posts: how you use your strumming hand.

Tuned guitar strings are at tension, stretched tight from headstock to bridge. This has a huge impact on dynamics, because the amount of force a string can absorb (and still resonate) depends on the string tension. If you strum harder than your string tension can handle, you’ll get an unpleasant, buzzy sound – or worse, you’ll actually start to muffle the strings as they snap back against the guitar instead of ringing out. (That percussive effect can be really cool and useful when it’s done right, but that’s a topic for another piece).

If you’re not getting much sound out of your guitar, you have the opposite problem: the movement of your hand isn’t generating enough energy to get the strings ringing. It’s simple physics: you want to produce sound by efficiently translating the force of your strum to the strings…”efficiently” in the sense that the energy of the arm or hand movement goes to the strings and not to extra movements that don’t contribute to the sound.

To break this down a little, just follow these basic principles:

1. Keep your hand light and relaxed. Movement creates the energy, not muscle. If it looks or feels awkward when you strum, it probably is. Relax and explore until you find a position that feels fluid and natural.

2. The further your arm swings, the more sound you’ll produce. Playing softly means relying more on the hand and a loose wrist, while playing louder will bring more arm into it.

3. You should have a sense what it takes to create three basic degrees of intensity: soft, medium, and loud. You should also be able to play a smooth crescendo: start as softly as you can, and gradually get louder. Check out this demonstration:

Notice the difference between the softer sound produced by the small hand movement, the loud sound produced by the swinging arm, and the gradations between as the movement gets larger. Notice also how the strum movement is relaxed and efficient…there’s very little muscle work involved, and the hand never moves further from the strings than needed to create the appropriate sound.

So to take this back to the opening of this post…if you play a song without dynamics, your performance will be much less interesting. Contrast is one of the most important elements in music, because variation draws attention and creates interest. Dynamic contrasts make music more compelling and dramatic, and can really help amplify the emotion in the lyric. Ultimately, performing is about communicating feelings. A dynamic performance will make your audience more engaged, interested, and able to feel what you want them to feel.