Quote:
Originally Posted by blastingas10
I've Been looking more into rhythm guitar and realizing that it really is an overlooked part of guitar playing, I'm certainly guilty of overlooking it. It's not as easy as it may seem, I've realized. Something thats really troubling me is the "rate of harmonic change", I guess is what you would call it, aka the duration of chord changes. It's easy to fall into the trap of having every chord occupy a bar (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not too familiar with this terminology).
My first instinct when composing a progression is to strum each chord the same amount of times and to stay on each chord for the same amount time. I'm trying to break out of that, it becomes so boring and really lacks a melody. It's hard to add lyrics and a vocal melody to a chord progression when it's really monotonous. The vocal melody ends up becoming a reflection of the monotonous progression.
Can anyone relate and share some tips?
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I'd be careful trying to squeeze too many chord changes into one bar, it won't enrich your pieces any more than a slower harmonic rhythm would have and will just weaken the entire harmonic structure, you'd also have to work overtime to avoid unnecessary repetition. One or two a bar is just fine, Don't force yourself to break the bar lines, you gain very little by trying to write an uneven piece without necessity. If you want to add a bit of flavor I'd try incorporating a walking bassline into the progression, it should help you break it up a bit better and give you plenty of room for variety.