Give the Guitarist Some!
BY WILL BERNARD
Will Bernard has played in a host of boundary-stretching groups, performing jazz, hip-hop,
world, and experimental music with many stops
in between. As a touring artist, Bernard has
been gaining steady momentum, performing in
his own band or as a member of the Stanton
Moore Trio, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress,
Groundation, and other lineups. His forthcoming album, Outdoor Living will be released soon.
For more information, visit willbernard.com.
drum and the Xs along the top are for the
hi-hat. An open hi-hat is marked with a
circle. As you can see, there is a lot going on
here. It’s highly syncopated and very busy.
The driving pulse is based on a 16th-note
groove and provides the grid in which you
can line up the hits and accents provided
by the snare. When you craft a guitar part
based on something like this, typically you’re
going to choose much simpler patterns that
either double or play off of what is already
happening. However, in this lesson we will
play more of the parts in order to really
assimilate the funky drummer groove.
Fig. 1
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Beginner
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Understand and dissect different elements of a drum groove.
• Create funky and percussive
guitar riffs.
• Simultaneously play in several
different registers to simulate
different instruments.
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Click here to hear
sound clips of
these examples
Fig. 3
Rhythm guitarists can benefit from being aware of what the drummer is doing. A
great way to dive into this world is to study
drum patterns. With the availability of transcriptions all over the internet, it has never
been easier to get inside the mind of a funky
drummer. There are usually three parts to a
drum pattern: kick, snare, and hi-hat. Each
instrument occupies its own sonic space—
think low, medium, and high—and these
parts can easily translate to the guitar as bass,
chords, and melody. By combining these elements, you can create interesting composite
rhythms, and in this lesson we are going to
look at a few examples.
The starting point will be a pattern similar to Clyde Stubblefield’s classic “Funky
Drummer” beat shown in Fig. 1. Reading
drum notation is pretty similar to standard
notation. The lowest notes are the bass
drum, the middle notes represent the snare
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