Groovy Musings

Warning! This will be more relevant to string players and harpists than vocalists, or wind or brass players!

I recently took a course called “Strum Bowing” for violinists who want to get more groove into their playing, and learned a lot of cool and groovy stuff both for violinists and other musicians to consider.

The inventor of this technique is Tracy Silverman, who along with Darryl Unger, was a member of the innovative Turtle Island Quartet. The quartet has had numerous members over the years, and Tracy was in from 1993 – 1997.  Here’s a more recent line up if you want to hear what they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfXjOX-L2LI

So, what the heck is “strum bowing?” It’s making use of the bow to create a groove the way guitarists do with their strumming hand. On a guitar, you can strum continually down and up but when you mute the chord by lifting the pressure of your fingers but not lifting off the strings, the resulting strum sounds more like a percussive beat than a strummed chord. The groove is created by only pressing the fingers to the fretboard on the beats you want to accent, and letting the pick create the scratchy “drum” beat on all other strums.

So Tracy takes you through how to do that on fiddle, and also how to “chop” which is so percussive there is no pitch. Visit his website if you are play violin, viola, cello, or string bass and are interested in learning this technique:  https://www.strumbowing.com/ It’s a great course!

I’m loving trying all this out on violin, but it got me musing…

How does this apply to other instruments? Well, with any of my strumming instruments (tenor banjo, mandolin, guitar etc.) I can simply mute chords just like guitarists to get a rhythmic groove, emphasizing only the beats I press my fingers to the fingerboard. I’ve done that for years with bar chords on the guitar but haven’t managed to try it on banjo and mandolin because I’m often playing chords with open strings. You can also mute strings by laying your fingers across the strings if there are open strings in the chord. Need to work on that…

But what about harp?

If we want to be more percussive on harp, we usually do more damping of the strings, but to make it really groove, it’s also important to incorporate the damp into the rhythm, so that the damping sound is on the beat you mean to put it on. And that’s tricky to do, but adds to the groove in a way that simply damping whenever it’s convenient does not. Groove doesn’t just mean syncopation or other interesting patterns. It could even be just having all the notes in a melody “in the pocket.” So letting your body (strumming hand, bowing arm) keep a steady beat will help put all the notes you play in the right slots rhythmically.

With both strumming on the guitar and strum bowing, there is a consistent motion of the fastest rhythmic element, (eighth notes or sixteenth notes) but for harp, we have to pluck and then damp, which are two very different actions.

I’m still in the musing stage on this, but the key thing is to keep that unit of rhythm going somehow. I’ve suggested to students and harp ensembles to do something physically to feel where the downbeat is during a dotted quarter and eighth rhythm. I’ve suggested grunting “uh” on count 2, so it would look like:

But the problem is that the “uh” might come too soon, or the eighth note may not come immediately after so it doesn’t resolve the issue some people have of shortchanging the dotted note. A better solution may be to put in two “uh’s” so that each eighth note is felt either in the fingers or in the voice.

It’s not a good way to perform of course, but it makes sure that there are three units for the dotted quarter and one unit for the eighth. So it would be “Pluck uh uh pluck pluck.”

If I were strumming chords on a guitar with this rhythm, I can strum continual eighth notes and just press the chord on the first down, lift on the first up and second down, and then press again on the next up and the next down.

I have always put the rhythm into my body in some way, either in my shoulders, or in my torso with a very slight bounce, but so many new harpists are focused too much on playing the correct notes with the correct fingers that they are not allowing themselves to move a different part of the body to keep the rhythm.  

What may work better since the focus is on the fingers and strings would be to move the wrist very lightly down and up on eighth notes so each eighth note segment is felt in the body and not just silently counted “1 & 2 & 3 &.” Silent counting without the feeling of rhythm would not necessarily be even. In trying this out myself, I’m finding it’s actually similar to how I lead our Harpers Hall Ensemble. I know my torso and shoulders move, but I am pretty sure I’m moving my arms or hands in time as well, almost like a conductor in an orchestra.

Any of you harpists want to try the wrist concept and let me know how that feels? I intend to try it on a few of my private students.

Here’s a short video of what that might look like (this is the first A of Arran Boat Song.)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/124cduJGV_cZXsbzUkRjJ2Drwugpy9Ba_/view?usp=share_link

So, give it a try and let me know how that feels! Here’s the Arran Boat Song with lots of that rhythm in the tune. We play it in Gaelic Muses using two violins and harp, and then move into Glass Island Reel.

 

Thank you Tracy for giving me some new ideas!