Interlocking Chord Rhythms
Here’s another rhythmic/harmonic exercise. It uses the basic rhythm of “Most Excellent Weirdness”. This is the basic rhythm:
To make things easy we only use two ‘chords’ or rather modes. Here is the pattern for the treble hand. The chord symbols are really only used as a rough guide.
This is the very simple bass-hand pattern. Easy to finger because it’s all fourths, just a barree chord. The naming again is a little ambiguous as always when stacked fourths are involved.
Extending this to make a two-chord pattern:
Now we put both hands together. The chord quality, or harmonic context shifts slightly. C7sus is as close as it gets, basing the chord spelling on the lowest note played. Of course to make it more accurate it would have to be a C13sus. The B7sus technically is a B11 alternating with a B13sus.
Rhythmically it’s a bit of a challenge. Keep the bass hand straight and steady. Try different articulations for the treble line playing around with short and long note durations.
Now we’ll spice things up a bit by replacing the last bass-hand chord of every measure by a low bass note. Again the harmonic context shifts a little. Rhythmically it’s the same, but the ear wants to hear the low bass note on one. It’s much harder to keep the top line steady now.
This next variation puts a backwards march (or call it a samba) in the bass hand.
Variation three incorporates one of my favorite patterns in the bass hand. Technically the treble line is in 4/4 while the bass plays 3+3+2/4 which of course comes out to eight beats.
It’s easy to come up with cool or interesting sounding combinations of chords. Changing chords and fingerings quickly is the hard part. For me the hardest thing is to improvise stuff like that and keep track of what I am doing harmonically – especially planning to move both hands to a new position while keeping the groove.
- Stick Stuff 2 – Basic Funk Grooves
- Stick Stuff 3 – Both Hands on Treble Side
- Stick Stuff 4 – 3-2-2-2
- Stick Stuff 5 – 3-2-2-2-3-2-2
- Stick Stuff 6 – 5/4 Latin
- Stick Stuff 7 – 5/4 Latin Funk
- Stick Stuff 8 – 6/4 Latin
- Stick Stuff 9 – 9/8 Latin
- Stick Stuff 10 – 7/4 Latin Funk
- Stick Stuff 11 – Partido Weirdo
- Stick Stuff 12 – 9-9-9-8
- Stick Stuff 13 – Different Olenka
- Stick Stuff 14 – Salsa in 10
- Stick Stuff 15 – Stick-O-Lypso
- Stick Stuff 16 – Polychords
- Stick Stuff 17 – Advanced Chord Scales
- Stick Stuff 18 – Interlocking Chord Rhythms
- Stick Stuff 19 – 7/8 Ostinato
- Stick Stuff 20 – Cool Chords
- Stick Stuff 21 – Baiao Progression