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By David Hodge
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Changing your volume to suit a song will make your playing more dynamic. With audio examples
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Practice Plan
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The examples in this lesson are just that—examples. Take some songs that you already know how to play and see how you can apply each concept to them. Not every approach will work for every song, but through trial and error, you’ll develop a better ear for what will help you really communicate the song.
Play It: “Summertime Blues” (page 46), “Surfin’ USA” (page 52), “Smoke on the Water” (page 54). All songs are transcribed in the Summer 2007 issue of Play Guitar!
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Tune Up
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Introduction
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In conversation, your voice is alive: loud and laughing one moment, hushed and secretive the next. Your volume and tone give weight to your words and help you communicate.
The same idea applies to music. Think about the intense changes of emotion that occur in songs like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as they morph from soft, almost classical-style ballads to thrashing rock songs in the blink of an eye.
As a musician, your guitar is your voice and it’s capable of a wide range of emotions. Let’s take a look at some simple ways you can use dynamics, which are changes in volume or intensity, to impress listeners with your song arrangements.
PLAY IT LOUD (OR SOFT): 10 minutes
One way to add dynamics is to change your volume levels at specific parts of the song. You can play quietly on the verses and loud on the chorus. Or loud on the verses and louder on the chorus. If your song has a bridge, you might play it really softly, then return to the normal volume level for the rest of the song. One time-honored approach is to get really quiet on the last verse of a song and then come in as loud as possible for the final chorus. You can also repeat the chorus (or even the last line of the song) a final time at a very soft volume.
Take a song you know well (or use one of the songs in this issue of Play Guitar!), and work out three different arrangements. Use the song itself to give you clues as to where to raise and lower the volume. Are the lyrics in one verse more introspective than in the others? Play it quietly. If you begin with a bang, bring things to a more intimate tone later in the song. Experiment with different levels of loudness, and don’t just settle for one setting of “loud” and one of “quiet.”
SIMPLIFY (OR COMPLICATE) YOUR STRUMMING: 5 minutes
You can also change the dynamics in a song by altering your strumming pattern. The first measure of SOFT STRUMS establishes a driving rhythmic strum that you should play at a good volume. In the second measure, break up the strumming into an eighth note followed by an eighth rest and a half note, and bring down the volume.
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Soft Strums
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Printable Version
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