SEAN CONKLIN

Be sure to check out Sean's immediate download e-book "SOLOING TECHNIQUES FOR GUITAR" now available here at CFH!

Hey everyone, my name is Sean Conklin. I'm the founder of the guitar resource website, www.infiniteguitar.com. Check it out to access guitar videos, lessons, chord finder software, tablature, reviews, music history, and tons more.

If you want to have creative rhythm playing, then you definitely want to have a good understanding of displacement. What is displacement? It is the act of playing notes in unexpected places within a rhythm section. This lesson is designed to help you fully understand displacement, as well as incorporate it into your own playing.

In the first exercise, the open Low E string is being played as 16th notes. So for every count (counts being "1" , "e" , "+" , "a" , etc.), you are playing that Low E note. We will be working with 16th notes exclusively.

Now, let's take out (displace) some of those notes. In this exercise, let's only play 16th notes on the 1st and 3rd beats of every measure.

Now, let's analyze the 16th note pattern a little more and see how we can make some challenging rhythms.

In this next exercise, we're only going to play the "e" counts and the "a" counts in each beat. These counts have more of an off-time feel as opposed to the number counts and the "+" counts.

Now we're going to randomize it. On some beats, we'll play the number counts and the "+" counts, and on others, we'll play the "e" counts and the "a" counts.

Now that we have an idea of how to randomize the notes on different counts, let's put it into a more musical context.

Once you can play these exercises, the best thing for you to do is to start making your own variations. It's pretty much pointless to learn this stuff and then not experiment with these patterns on your own.

Try writing out a few measures with tablature, and write the 16th note count under each one. Without using your guitar, just tab out random notes on different counts. Then, have fun trying to learn it on the guitar! Once you start doing this, you should begin to develop a better sense of displaced rhythm. And who knows, you might end up stumbling upon some pretty cool riffs!

Rock on,
Sean Conklin

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