The first time I came across “volume swelling” or “violining” was listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams in the Rumours album. A delicate song where Lindsay Buckingham uses the effect to “swirl” his guitar lines in and out with Stevie Nick’s vocals like a duet. Yet despite being able to create this effect for free on any electric guitar, as well as being such a simple technique to learn, it’s rarely used. The only other time I recall hearing it was with Dream Theater’s Awake in Scarred and Voices where John Petrucci combined the volume swell principle with a square wave modulator to make it more ambient.
What is Volume Swell?
So what is swelling? It’s basically the technique of using your guitar volume effectively (effective use of volume on your guitar will probably appear on another blog article here at some point). The principle is really easy, you use the volume control to change the sound envelope of your guitar. Normally, a guitar when picked gives a sharp “attack” as lots of energy has been placed into the string. This occurring at the beginning is what gives the guitar its characteristic “twang”. So instead, you can pick the string and whilst it continues to ring, bring the volume back up for a smoother entry. The result is a much smoother sounding note.
One you’ve mastered controlling the volume either by your hand or foot, the only really complication is timing your playing correctly as you have to play earlier than you would normally. As you create more complicated parts, this will be the bit which you’ll have to experiment and get a feel for.
This is the second and concluding part so please re-watch part 1 if you wish to re-fresh your memory of what we will be looking to achieve. In part 1, we discussed how the new generation of acoustic guitarists were pushing the boundaries of acoustic guitar playing and creating wonderful new arrangements, both complex and rich in timbres.
To finish off the tutorial, we will be learning one pattern which pieces together and incorporates most of the primary combinations of right hand movements required for this style of playing.
The writing approach
When listening to music with a full band, we often either listen to the song as a whole or focus on a specific instrument. With percussive guitar / 3d guitar, we actually want to emulate the entire band so we have to listen to or imagine each instrument and decide which parts are the most important. Then we can break down their parts, pinpoint what notes and sounds we want to produce and at what specific points in time. This will provide the basic patterns which our hands will have to reproduce.
To keep this lesson brief and just to introduce the principles, the pattern we are going to go through is a riff based pattern which is easily developed from standard two-hand finger tapping technique.
The breakdown of parts
Now in modern rock drumming, the sense of groove is ultimately provided by the kick drum and snare drum. As these are often the loudest in the mix they are definitely worth considering in our new arrangement.
A good rhythm section will have the bass player tightly orchestrated with the drummer so a good concept is to consider having a low note (like a chord note) sound together with the kick drum. If we use a simple 4/4 rhythm, the kick drum appears on the 1st and 3rd beat of the bar and the snare on the 2nd and 4th beats.
Writing it down
Once we’ve got the general idea of what to play and when, it is then worth writing it down so that we can follow step by step whilst learning it. Here’s the steps for this session’s pattern.
Step 1: Kick drum note playing open E.
Step 2: Pluck the open D string.
Step 3: Fret hand hammers on the 2nd fret on the D string to play E.
Step 4: Pick hand hammer on tap the D string at the 12th fret to play an octave above.
Step 5: The finger used to tap then pulls off the string to play the open D string.
Step 6: Fret hand hammers on the 2nd fret again to play E.
Step 7: Kick drum note to play open E.
Step 8: Tom drum tone.
Step 9: Hold the E minor chord and pick hand strums upwards across the strings.
Now here’s the same again within a musical notation form to provide the rhythmic timing reference.
2 Hand Percussive Tap Pattern Exercise
As this is a video tutorial, take advantage and replay any sections as you desire. For those with a metronome, I recommend starting with a very slow tempo such as 60bpm. Once we get comfortable playing it at this speed then increment it by 8bmp each time.
Summary
Once you have become comfortable with the pattern of movements, you can then start experimenting with the rhythms, the notes being played and even adding more percussive sounds. You can then look at other percussive tones or other forms of finger tapping such as double tapping (e.g. chord tapping) and incorporate them into your own patterns which lead to grooves and melodies.
So to finish off, here is the notation for the example I played in part 1.
2 Hand Percussive Tapping Demo Transcribed (See part 1 for video demo)
Whilst the latter half of the last century of music nurtured the electric guitar, fuelled by advances in digital electronic technologies (which in turn fuelled electronic, hip-hop and the likes), a rather smaller proportion of guitar players have stuck to their roots and taken acoustic guitar playing to the next level. Continuously evolving over time, these “new acoustic guitarists” emerged making use of the additional sounds possible on an acoustic and consequently developed ever more complex arrangements. The body of an acoustic guitar presents a naturally unique yet surprising globally unexplored potential which many of these players have capitalised on – i.e. it’s still a sound box!
I first came across this style of playing in the late 1990s when my friend, then singer of the same band we were in, bought me a Tuck and Patti album for Christmas. As a classically trained guitarist herself, she knew that the world of Tuck Andreas, Michael Hedges, Acoustic Alchemy (UK readers may remember the theme tune to the BBC show Gardener’s World with Alan Titchmarsh) would open up to me and I was eventually introduced me to today’s geniuses of the genre, such as Preston Reed, Jaquie Gipson and Vicki Genfan. The principle also made it into the popular music genre with Newton Faulkner taking the lead. Now before you feel you have to rush out to buy your very own “guitar-harp” or anything fancy, it’s possible to use your own acoustic to get very similar results.
What is percussive guitar playing?
“Percussive guitar” or “3D guitar” is a method of playing an acoustic guitar by complimentary incorporation of percussive sounds together with traditional guitar techniques. It provides guitarists with a larger palette of tones and voices to write and play with. The advantage is that you no longer have to consider an acoustic guitar just as a melody or chord generating instrument, but also as a rhythmic generating one too.
Why use this style?
Having come from a rock guitar background myself, the way these players used the instrument attracted me due to the sheer power and grooves you can add to your playing. This is a particularly useful technique to have within your “guitar-dom-ness” for playing solo or being an accompanist to a singer. Certainly for a time in the UK, many pubs and clubs held regular “open-mic nights” which allows up to two people to perform without the venue having to arrange and pay for special public performance licenses. Thus it was a great way to find lots of places to air your music to an audience and quickly stand out. Also check out my Percussive Strumming tutorial for another technique I use for similar reasons.
How to play percussive tap guitar (Part 1)?
In this mini lesson video, we first locate where on the acoustic guitar body we want to generate our sounds. Here are just a few other notes to add.
We will use the two hand finger tapping technique as our springboard baseline method. This way, all we have to do is slightly modify a style we may already be used to.
I’ve chosen to teach the principles using standard guitar tuning. Once the principles are understood, alternative tunings can be used – the guitarists named above use alternate tunings to make fingering of chords more accessible for this style.
I know some of you who have already studied Preston Reed may be thinking that I’ve chosen different parts of the guitar body to play the equivalent kick drum and snare drum tone. I show the kick drum tone from the upper part of the guitar body to give access to playing bass notes with the kick drum tone. The reason for this being that typical arrangements with a full rhythm section, the kick drum falls tightly with the bass note. The other option is to develop your fret hand technique to pick strings too!
For the snare equivalent, there is another alternative which is similar to my percussive strumming lesson. You can form a “flat fist” (similar to a kung-fu style Leopard fist shape) and tap over the strings with your finger nails at the same time applying a palm mute. For this tutorial I’ve chosen to use the tapping method which is a slight alteration of finger tapping which allows notes to ring out rather than cutting off everything every time. One extra tip I need to mention, when tapping notes on the acoustic guitar with your picking hand, you will find you have to mute the other side of the string with your fretting hand to stop it from sounding as well.
If you enjoyed this mini tutorial and found it useful, please feel free to leave me a message and let others know. Thanks, enjoy, have fun and good luck!
Even as a rock guitarist, playing acoustic guitar is also an important and incredible arsenal to have in your “guitar-dom-ness”. However as I found, without the luxury of all the many effects available for the electric guitar, despite attempts to play different rhythms and chords, strumming can start to became rather “samey”.
It would take one late night drive when my guitar journey took an incredible leap. Having consciously made the decision to miss my favourite band Dream Theater to see some old friends it was the same night I discovered Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Nickel Creek (many thanks to the BBC radio DJ “whispering Bob Harris” for these introductions). For some reason they managed to get acoustic instruments sounding great!
It was not until I saw Nickel Creek in Sheffield that I truly saw their amazing technique; my musician friends and I were seriously blown away to the point where we couldn’t speak for over an hour after the show. Yes even rock/metal musicians proud of their technical capabilities can be in awe and inspired too. That night was made complete when we met Chris, Sean and Sara in person as we exited the nearby pub to aid our speech recovery.
The next day I set about recreating what I saw. Hearing the percussive nature of Bluegrass players on a recording was one thing – seeing it played live and in person was a shock to the system. They didn’t need a drummer and yet had managed to convey all the grooves and energy as if they did have one. How?
After hours of trial and error, a lot of sore hands and worn picks, I eventually developed (stumbled upon) this technique having seen Chris Thile’s command over his mandolin and Sean Watkins over his guitar. Saving you the chore I went through, this technique is simple to do and doesn’t take much effort other than modifying your picking hand movement. Once you have it under your belt it can literally open up many doors for adding that extra spice, especially if playing in a small groups or solo.
What is percussive strumming?
It’s a style of picking performed on acoustic guitar to add a percussive sound with a pick.
Why learn how to use percussive strumming?
The sound generated by the percussive strumming (or percussion picking) technique can enhance a strumming pattern or riff providing an extra sense of rhythm and dynamic; groove! The sound can be used to simulate a percussionist or drummer playing along with a snare drum, particularly handy when playing solo.
How to strum percussively?
Watch the video to hear percussive strumming in action and learn how to recreate the effect. Then consider where throughout your playing you would want it to sound. A good starting place is to consider a drummer’s use of a snare drum – the snare typical appears on the 2nd and 4th beats of a bar (or measure).
If you enjoyed this mini tutorial and found it useful, please feel free to leave me a message and let others know. Thanks, good luck and have fun!
