Quote:
Originally Posted by blastingas10
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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How's your strumming? I don't mean this to be flippant but I've noticed people who don't actively work on developing their strumming technique tend to struggle with composing rhythms. If you parallel playing guitar with drums your strumming hand is what creates the beat while your fretting hand determines which skin will produce what tone.
Ultimately it sounds like you need to add some funk to your flow for lack of better terms. The way you describe things isn't really wrong, it's just very square, 1 chord per bar, strummed the same amount.
A really easy way to break out of that is to combine two bars. So let's say you've got a simple chord progression like G, C, D, Am. The trick is finding a way to alternate between the chords partway through the rhythmic structure. So for this example try something like a '1-234, 1-234' type strum per bar, some classic waltz action (just like Jimi's Manic Depression) plus that rhythmic structure is easy to split down the middle.
So that same chord progression can easily become a bar of G, C, D/Am, D/Am. While it might seem a little redundant to double the last bar, this way you still have 4 bars of rhythm but as you can see it moves through an extra chord change and adds a nice punch to the rhythmic dynamic. The other reason it 'works' is because the original progression anticipates the D to start the 3rd bar, but only requires the Am to finish the pattern at the end of the 4th bar as a transition back to the original G.
Ultimately the best tip I can give to build up rhythm chops is
GET FUNKY 