In my method book, I came to some practise examples, in 4/4 time, which are giving me trouble. There are several instances where one beat is composed of an eighth chord with staccato dot (downstrum), beamed to a regular sixteenth chord (upstrum). How can this add up to one beat?, and how should this be played?
Should I play the stacattoed eighth chord for a full half beat, then immediately silence it for a quarter beat, then play the sixteenth chord for a quarter beat? That would add up to one beat, but listening to the CD, I don't hear stoppage...it sounds to me like some kind of continuous down-up strum.
Thanky in advance.
Two possibilities:
Maybe it's badly written. A staccato note is usually played as half the value, plus a half-value rest, so the staccato eighth plus a sixteenth would add up to only 3/4 of a beat. Either the eighth should be a dotted eighth, or the whole thing is a triplet (in which case the eighth and sixteenth combined add up to only half a beat)
The other possibility is that it's badly printed... that it's not a staccato, but just a dotted eighth. I've seen a few printing jobs like this, mostly in older (1970ish) books.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Third possibility: I'm simply a dunce. It turns out it's written correctly; the eighths are dotted, not staccatoed. The previous page was a lesson about staccato, so when I saw the dots in the next lesson I erroniously instantly thought staccato dots. Note to self: dot above = staccato, to the right = 'plus half'. [hoping I'm not the first person to make a fool of myself by doing this]. :oops:
