With my hands starting to feel their age (the pointer finger on my left hand is starting to get arthritic), I have to re-train myself in playing guitar. As I am still planning on going to the SPBGMA conference in Nashville in January, I know that I will be participating in some motel room and hallway jamming.
Now my lead guitar skills have pretty much dried up, as they weren’t that great to begin with, but I do still work on my rhythm guitar skills. I try to go back to the basics every few months by starting off slow with a metronome (about 70 beats per minute), then each day bring up the tempo a few notches until I get to about 120 bpm, which is pretty much the most common tempo for most bluegrass songs in 2/4 time.
I also occasionally refer to a DVD that was put out years ago by Musician’s Workshop, The Art of Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar with Chris Jones. He has a pretty laid-back approach to working on the rhythm chops, and while stressing the common “boom-chick” strum, he shows modifications, as well as some more modern strums that work with a 4/4 time signature.
After so many years playing electric guitar in punk and alt-country projects, and even after the past nearly two decades of concentrating on acoustic music, simple bluegrass rhythm guitar is really not that simple. The band (without a drummer) relies on that rhythm guitar to help keep a steady tempo. That basic “boom-chick” strum works with both the bass downbeat as well as the chop from the mandolin. I have worked with a lot of banjo players that have very little control of self-timing while doing their Scruggs rolls, and a rhythm guitarist with great control of tempo is a life saver to a bluegrass band.
I decided to check out what could be found on YouTube for bluegrass rhythm guitar. The search pulled out a few videos, and it seemed that each video had not only a different approach to the task, but even different fingerings altogether. Looking at the basic G chord, which in most beginner guitar books shows the first finger fretting the A string at the 2nd fret (creating a B note), the second finger fretting the low E string at the 3rd fret (creating a G note), and the third finger fretting the high E string at the 3rd fret (again, a G note). A few videos show a different position, with the first finger either muting the A string, or not touching the fingerboard at all and letting the second finger “mute” that A string, Then, the fourth finger frets the B string at the 3rd fret,(creating a D note). What this does is create a G5 chord, which removes the 3rd note (B) from the chord and only gives you G and D notes. This has a chime-like sound, which some bluegrassers prefer. Not me, I like the full sound of the whole major chord. One person actually stated in his video that this G5 is the only chord that a bluegrass rhythm guitarist should be using. Really?
Another video had the instructor forming a basic G chord, but with every strum, he would hammer on the low E string to the G note with the downbeat. It sounded less like a bluegrass strum and more like a surf-rock rhythm! One video states that the “boom” bass note should be stressed more, while another video states that the “chick” strum should be the emphasis. It seems that if you watch 10 videos on bluegrass rhythm guitar, there will be 11 opinions!
I will not get into the do’s and don’ts of bluegrass rhythm guitar. My one complaint about almost all of the videos is that they talk as if the typical bluegrass song (with exceptions of waltzes and those in quick 6/8 time) are all 4/4 time. I prefer to think of these as 2/4 time signatures, since the “boom-chick” action is two counts. Most folk and rock rhythms following a straight pattern usually fall into the 4/4 time signature, with a “boom-a-chick-a” pattern. Of all of the videos that I watched on this topic, I feel that Bryan Sutton says it the best on working with this rhythm pattern.
Luegra 