The Space In-Between Us [Intermediate] [Theory]

Now that your hands are throbbing from all of the clapping that surely ensued once we figured out our first time signature, I guess it's time to pick the ole axe back up. (Tangent: How many times in the English language do you have back-to-back words that end in 'e'?) We will get a chance to strum our hearts away at the end of the lesson, but we need to take the details of the notes a bit further. So, more clapping...



Today we're going to try to start putting it all together. Concentrating on playing notes correctly and in a manner that wont make the neighbors think you're "in one of them dag-blasted punk bands!" This is what separates the men from the boys, the alpha from the pack, or as I like to say, the musicians from the drummers.

In the last lesson, we described a song as a mile (entire musical piece) which is marked by feet (measures) and then are broken up into inches (beats). To take that a step further, there are many different ways to split up a beat. You can split it in half, thirds, quartets, etc. Then you could split the smaller notes even further if you're into some speed metal or something crazy like that. But today, we're just going to hit the basics.

Something I forgot to mention  left out intentionally in the last lesson is what we would call those beats. One specific beat in a 4/4 time signature would be called a quarter note, which means that there are four equally spaced (quarterly divide) notes in one measure. If you have one note that stays constant throughout the entire measure it's a whole note. Two notes equally divided would be half notes. Bascially you would start with a whole note and any time it is broken down after that, the name will indicate how many equally spaced notes will be given in that specific amount of time.

Ok, my heads spinning now...let's look at a table. We know that there are 4 beats per measure in a 4/4 time signature, so we will indicate 4 beats at the top of the table. For each type of note, I will put a corresponding '|' under where the note begins for each type.

               1     &      2   &   3   &   4   &
Whole:   |--------------------------------------

Half:       |---------------------|----------------

Quarter: |------------|---------|---------|-------

Eigth:     |-----|------|-----|----|----|----|----|---

(Alright, here is me wishing that these fonts would have an equal width so my tables and tabs don't all look like crap. *wishing*)

Moving on. You will notice that once we get past the quarter notes, we have to start sub-dividing the notes. Keeping with simplicity, we will only be sub-dividing the notes by halves in this lesson. If we take a whole note and divide it into half we would have half notes. Divide them in half, we have quarter notes. Divide those in half and we have eigth notes. Then you have 8th to 16th notes and finally 16th to 32nd notes. (I'm assuming that theoretically you can continue to sub-divide the notes infinium, but there comes a point to where our brains can't keep up and differentiate between the start and stop of a note past 32nd notes at most tempos.)

If you were to count and clap along with eigth notes you would do so, like so:

1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &
c    c    c   c    c    c    c   c
When you tap your foot along to a song in 4/4, you notice that your foot has to come up for it to go down. When your foot is in the air, this is the moment where the '&' comes in. Try clapping all 8 beats in the measure while counting "One and Two and Three and Four and One and Two and Three and Four and etc"
Be sure to say the 'ands' while counting. Once you feel comfortable, just say the numbers while leaving out the 'ands', but continue to clap all 8 notes.

Feeling good? Feeling loose? Wanna go for 16th notes? Let's go for it!

To count 16th notes out loud we say that following sentence.

" 1  e  &  a  2  e  &  a  3  e  &  a  4  e  &  a "

Start off slow saying that sentence and clapping all the notes, then decrease your "voice count" to eigth notes, then again to just quarter notes, all while continually clapping all 16 notes.

If you haven't gotten a metronome yet, I highly encourage you invest in one quickly. You can buy a pocket metronome for fairly cheap at a local music store and I think even wal-mart may have one in their 'music section'. If not yet though, find a website that plays clicks for you.

Set the metronome at a fairly decent speed (I'd suggest starting off about 70, to where things don't drag but are still fairly slow). Then get your foot to tapping along with each beat and start clapping this pattern: whole note, half notes, quarter notes, eigth notes, and sixteenth notes. Repeat this until you are comfortable with it. Once you have clapped your way through, pick up your guitar and strum your way through the pattern, going whole > half > quarter > eigth > sixteenth. First few times through, use only the G chord. Once you get comfortable add in another chords and switch every other measure. Progress from there at your own pace but please ensure that you are totally comfortable with each step of imporvement before reaching for higher goals. Feel free, once comfortable with the given progression to mix it up, or play it backwards just to keep things fresh.

That'll do it for this lesson, thanks for reading along. We will probably have one more theory lesson before we jump back into a technique lesson. I'm never sure until I begin to write them so don't quote me on that, but that is the plan. Thanks for reading.