RHYTHM is a movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions. While RHYTHM most commonly applies to sound, such as music or spoken language, it may also refer to visual presentation, as “timed movement through space.”

Put in simple musical terms, RHYTHM is the flow of a composition through time. It is found in melody, harmony, structure, and texture.

One of my earliest influences as a guitar player was John McLaughlin. More than anything the rhythm in his music captivated me. I didn’t understand it but I felt it and wanted to figure out how it worked. Here’s a recent video of John McLaughlin and his group, Remember Shakti. I saw Shakti play five times when they were first together. Each concert was fabulous.

Indian music has had a place in my heart since I was a teenager. I went on to study South Indian music with Trichy Sankaran, who was teaching at York University when I was doing my undergraduate degree in jazz performance, and composition.

HARMONY is the simultaneous use of pitches (tones, notes), or chords. Chords are a big part of a guitar player’s world.

The guitar, like a percussion instrument, has lots of attack. The acoustic guitar has a quick decay and little sustain. In many styles of music the guitar plays an accompaniment role for the instrument carrying the tune, like a singer or a saxophone. In this role a guitarist is expected to play chords, or supply the harmony. The song I am featuring in this post is by a great Canadian guitarist/composer, Bruce Cockburn. Moment of Truth is an instrumental piece for the steel string guitar, electric bass and drum set has virtually no melody. It’s all chords and rhythm.

Below Bruce Cockburn explains his unusual thumb technique in a one minute lesson on If I had a Rockey Launcher.

Bruce Cockburn plays If I had a Rockey Launcher.

In music, TEXTURE is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece.

If you compare the two versions of Britten’s composition, you get a feeling for how texture can effect, or illicit different feelings from, a piece of music. The a cappella choir helps to create the setting for the piece, “in the bleak mid-winter.” Whereas, the version for boy soprano and piano is more directly expressive of lyrical meaning. To compare two other versions, see my post MELODY.

Corpus Christi Carol

Britten

A MELODY (a tune, a voice, a line) is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity. Below are two versions of the same melody, one sung by Jeff Buckley and the other instrumental by Jeff Beck. The Buckley version of this resonant tune carries with it the emotional connections of the lyrics. With a simple electric guitar accompaniment in a well produced recording the essence of the song comes across. Jeff Beck was inspired by Buckley’s version and made an instrumental version of it below. Without the lyrics you’re lead to in a different way. Compare these versions to the others I’ve included in my post TEXTURE.

He bare her up, he bare her down
He bare her into an orchard ground

Lully lullay, lully lullay
The falcon hath borne my mate away

And in that orchard there was a hall
That was hanged with purple and pall
And in that hall there was a bed
And it was hanged with gold so red

Lully lullay, lully lullay
The falcon hath borne my mate away

And on this bed there lyeth a knight
His wound is bleeding day and night
By his bedside kneeleth a maid
And she weepeth both night and day

Lully lullay, lully lullay
The falcon hath borne my mate away

By his bedside standeth a stone
Corpus Christi written thereon

INTRO – 4 bar vamp: 8 x

VERSE 1 – 16 bars: a, a, b, a VERSE 2 – 16 bars

GUITAR SOLOS on VERSE chords – Cale (16 bars), Clapton (16 bars), no soloist (16 bars)

1/2 VERSE – 8 bars: b, a

END – m.17-20, m.17-19 || : G | Bb C : || 4x  | G  ||