Greg Howe: Displaced Accents and Polyrhythms

Displaced Accents and Polyrhythms
by Greg Howe
Greg Howe shares a method to help in improvisation:

One of the most important aspects of improvisation, at least for me, is the ability to steadily deliver a stream of 16th notes (four notes per beat) containing interesting and somewhat unpredictable lines within the context of mid- to high-tempo music scenarios. Playing 16th notes at a typical mid-tempo speed such as 120 bpm is not necessarily a difficult task for many guitarists, however to do so in a manner that doesn’t rely on the use of overly predictable sequences or pre-rehearsed licks can often prove to be a bit more challenging.

One of the methods I’ve found to be very helpful in assisting with this quest is displacing the accents in these sets of fours, resulting in a particular kind of polyrhythm. The various official definitions of the word usually include language that goes something like, “the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.” If this concept were new to me, that definition would likely be of little value, so before we try to make use of this concept let’s first try to understand it.
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