1 You Will Be Activating The Beat From Your Spine
2 You Will Be Connecting With The Background Beat By Using A Stomp Box
3 Timing Will Improve
4 Sense of Feel Will Improve
5 Rhythm Guitar Playing Will Improve
6 Soloing Will Improve
7 Your Song Performances In General Will Become More Solid
8 Offbeat Stomp Usage Will Help You Play More Complicated Patterns
1 You Will Be Activating The Beat From Your Spine
When you are strumming, you are using the muscles in your arms to create a rhythmic beat that originates from your spine.
When you stomp your foot, you are adding an extra limb to the rhythm physically. Using a stomp box gets you moving more with the rhythm that you are playing.
How many guitarists have you seen that just that stand there like statues, and all you can see is their arms moving from their elbows? Some guitarists can still be great playing this way, as long as they are connected internally. This article is all about this internal connection to beat , and how using a percussion stomp box can help this massively.
Not everyone feels a beat in their spine so to speak , but all movement and rhythm emanates from the central nervous system . The internal beat can be felt sometimes as a body pulse.
Using a stomp box helps you connect the internal beat in your spine.
This internal beat is everything my friend.
2 You Will Be Connecting With The Background Beat By Using A Stomp Box
What is The background Beat ?
The internal beat, or the background beat is the pulse that is behind the song or rhythm. It blows my mind that this isn’t spoken about much with learning of most instruments especially guitar. It gets addressed in a round about way, but doesn’t seem to get fundamentally focused on. It needs to be focused on !. I will be making a huge deal about the background beat in many of my articles and videos .
Once you start using a stomp box, the background beat will be expressed through the movement of your leg/foot with the sound that it makes (unless you are stomping syncopated offbeats which we will look at later). The background beat will be expressed externally and audibly, This makes connection and awareness to the groove and feel of a song soooo much easier . Not everyone that has a great sense of rhythm actually senses or feels the beat through their spine so to speak , but think about it , all signals from the brain go through the central nervous system before getting to the peripheries of arms and legs . How many times have you seen babies that have just learn t to walk dancing to the music, bobbing their head bending their knees . They have the moves of a great guitarist without the guitar, and nobody has shown them how to move to the music! Also think indigenous tribes with music and dance ,movement pulse and beat. Start looking at people that know how to move to music , musicians and non musicians. Observe them.
3 General Timing Will Improve
Your general sense of staying in time will improve using a stomp box .
You don’t have to even own a stomp box , just start tapping your foot on the floor , or even on a piece of wood, your sense of staying in time will become more solid if you stick with it, to make your foot part of your playing and of your sound . A lot of guitar players try a stomp box and give it up pretty quick because they can’t get their foot perfectly in time in the first 5minutes. I did the same thing. I bought one and it sat there for two years. I started craving more beat in my live shows and began using the guitar more permissively, then I thought, hmmm might just give this stomper a bit more of a go. After a while another level of feel to started to kick in, and when it did, man what a difference it made !
Muscle memory and coordination will start to improve, because when using a stomper you are now sending signals from your brain to your feet as well as your hands. You are synchronizing your strumming to your foot beat . You are improving your reflex response in general.
It is amazing how much this helps your playing to become more solid. See if you can go out and watch a good guitarist live that knows how to use a stomp properly. Watch what is going on with their body movement as they play .
4 Sense of Feel Will Improve
Your feel will improve because you are adding a bottom end bass percussion sound to your playing .
This down beat bass thump will help you lean into your rhythm patterns with much more dynamic feel.
The feel will become more pronounced and easier for you to connect with the vibe of the song . Your playing will have more impact . You’re playing will sound fuller.
You will be covering more of the sound spectrum with the output of your rhythm. This is really important to note. The added depth of rhythm in your sound makes it easier to stay in time.
The percussive mid range frequencies mixed with the bass tone of the stomp can make a song feel great .
Its easier to get into the feel of a song with this extra fullness to the sound.
5 Rhythm Guitar Playing Will Improve
In general strumming and rhythm will improve enormously.
If you start to use a stomp box you are now
1 Moving More
2 Feeling More
3 Coordinating More
4 Listening More
5 Adding Low Frequency Beat
All this helps to set you up for being able to play different types of rhythm patterns for the future.
It is one of the best fundamental brain exercises that a guitarist should do.
Playing a stomp box helps you to relax more with your rhythm, because you are externalizing the background beat audibly and locking into it. Or if you are using a cross rhythm, you will be externalizing a syncopated beat in addition to your strumming.
6 Soloing Will Improve
Not sure how this is related to lead playing ? Think again ! Your soloing will improve enormously .
All guitar is rhythm. Soloing and lead is rhythm.
Whether it is on the beat or it is off. Being connected to the beat is the groundwork for awesome lead playing as well .
Sometimes you want to be connected to the beat , sometimes you don’t. But you do want to have control of every which way you manage your solo’s.
Introducing a stomp box to your playing will help your lead soloing in ways that is very unassuming. Connection to your soloing will be will be so much better , when you can play on the beat beat, off the beat, across the beat or whatever you want. This is fundamental to being a great lead player. Not all solos are right on any given beat throughout the piece, a great solo can be all over the show, this is my point. By being able to dance on and around the beat you will be have extra connection and control with your lead playing in a way that a lot of guitarists are oblivious to. The brushstrokes of your melodies can be placed with much more precision and accuracy, giving you more control and expression.
This extra skill and training of using a stomp will help give you mastery over the rhythm behind your soloing, bringing a new dimension to your playing by giving you extra rhythmic focus on the piece of music you are playing.
7 Your Song Performances In General Will Become More Solid
Your performances will all become more grounded and solid the more often you use a stomp box . You will notice it in the following ways.
More people will connect and enjoy your music.
More musicians will enjoy playing with you.
It will be easier for you to play with good musicians.
Song delivery will tighten up.
Your hair will look shinier.
Dancing competitions will be so much easier to win.
8 Offbeat Stomp Usage Will Help You Play More Complicated Rhythm Patterns
The left brain right brain switching that is going on with strumming, can be helped to loosen up with the strumming faculty of muscle coordination improvement by playing off beats with your foot.
Once you feel comfortable with on beat patterns , you can start to introduce offbeat syncopation’s and different variations . These are often harder at first , but can sound really interesting. They help your brain sync with cross rhythm on beats and offbeats , by expressing them physically and audibly .
Conclusion
I’m not saying that all guitarists should always use a stomper . But if you want to take your connection to rhythm to a new level fast , the stomper is a means to do this .The percussion stomp box is probably one of the most underrated foot pedal for guitarists in the world for all the reasons I have just mentioned . I use one every solo gig I play , and at home when I practice . Not for every song of course , but I love feeling the groove.
I am well aware that I am repeating myself over and over in regards to referring to the background beat in this article . I am doing that on purpose because awareness of it seems to be low across the board . Even people that do it well aren’t really aware of whats going on , and don’t really talk about it much . I will be banging on and on about it!
The improvement to my playing with a stomp has been through the roof .
If you play drums as well as guitar and think , I don’t have to try stomp because I play drum’s , my foot is already doing its thing . You are wrong . I played for years and adding the stomp to playing guitar is different!
Most musicians Try Stomp For A Short Time Then Scrap It . This is because their foot isn’t in time well enough to the standard of their playing, and also it feels awkward at first . Trust Me Push Yourself To Use One .
Get past the barrier of ” aaawww gee this feels a bit uncomfortable” and Naaah it’s not perfectly in time right off the start ”
Give it time . It won’t take long . Use it regularly after a few weeks you wont believe the difference in your playing .
Give it a go , and have fun .
All The Best
Mark