Beginner Guitar Lesson 14

Wonderwall, James Brown and the 1

When playing guitar we choose the chords and melodies with the left hand and most of our focus when learning guitar naturally go to the ins and outs of the fretboard.

This is all well and good, especially if we fully understand the composition as the Guitar Conspiracy teach.

However, once you get the left hands movement of a song down and have made your decisions on shapes etc, the actual playing happens in the right hand.

How we group the rhythms, what time signature, what feel, dynamics etc are all executed with the right hand.

Playing with a drummer

When playing with other musicians our main focus should now be on placement of rhythmical patterns.

For example the snare drum, which usually appear on beat 2 and 4 will sound more “tight” if we as guitarists hit our strums in the same exact microscopic place as the drummer, or later.

This is known as “locking in” with the drummer.

Since the drum stick hitting the snare will always be a lot more punchy than a guitar string being hit it’s very important that your hit is either at the same time or later than where the drummer place his snare.

This is all microscopic stuff and is much more obvious when playing than when thinking about it since the placement will vary from drummer to drummer.

What it comes down to is your ability to gel since the drummer no matter what will dictate the placement.

If you play bass the same will be true for the bass drum. The attack of the bass drum will always be louder than the finger on the string.

These details is what makes having a great, steady drummer in the band so important.

Rhythmical grouping in musical styles

As well as having the microscopic placement to deal with different rhythmical feels, we also have grouping of rhythms to play around with.

Samba and other Latin styles for example are built on that the 1 is pushed, this mean the weight of the main beat is not on the beat! We get a specific type of feel from this.

Standard pop and rock songs usually have a steady 2 and 4 snare which makes it easy for a big audience to clap along to at a steady, never changing pace.

James Brown puts it on the 1

One of the more legendary artists in popular music, James Brown, was the first to make it a heavy beat 1, followed by a series of syncopated beats.

Fills are almost always played with emphasis on the 1 as well. Cymbals, loud open hi hats etc will often happen on beat 1.

Listen to any James Brown up tempo song and count along. Say 1 as loud as you can followed by quite 2, 3, 4. Very often James Brown will take this further by making only every other 1 loud. Count 1 (loud) 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 (loud) 2 etc.

So what does this all have to do with Wonderwall, Oasis is everything but funk, aren’t they?

Oh yes, however, the focus on beat 1 can be used outside this musical style as well.

The same concept is applied in Wonderwall, the 1 is made massive by being completely on it’s own, followed by different 16th note rhythms for two bars before we get another big, empty 1.

Study the rhythm video and see how I only play one strum over beat 1, it happens over the Em chord in the verse and the C chord over the chorus. The more intense the rhythm is previous to the 1, the bigger the 1 will seem.

Count along as you did over the James Brown video above.

To learn more about rhythm, check Rhythm Guitar.

Next up we have Beginner Guitar Lesson 15.

Happy playing!

Dan (your guitar guru)