Rhythm Guitar With Cory Wong How To Stack And Blend Your Guitar Parts

Guitar World

Rhythm guitar master Cory Wong offers some effective approaches to weaving together multiple guitar parts, whether you're working with another guitarist or layering parts for a recording.

Transcript

00:00Hey, what's up? This is Corey Wong. Today on this lesson, I'm going to talk about playing

00:12with other guitar players, how to approach multiple guitar parts or just layering yourself.

00:18And it's a little bit of a continuation from the last lesson that I did. If you missed out on that,

00:22you can check it out. It's about how to come up with rhythm guitar parts, my mindset on playing

00:28rhythm guitar parts, not just playing chords, but actually finding compositional and hook elements

00:33in your playing. So as far as today, what I want to talk about is something that I get asked a lot,

00:39especially regarding playing with Mark Lettieri and the Fearless Flyers. People ask me,

00:43well, how do you know what to play? You're the guitar player. He's the guitar player. How do

00:48you know what to do when there's two guitars? And although I understand the question, the answer

00:54is the exact same as what do I do when there's a keyboard player in the band? What do I do when

00:59there's a horn section? Really, it's about what is my function and what is my role in this song?

01:06And in every band, it's different. It really just depends on the song. So in some songs,

01:11I might be the one who's really driving the rhythmic momentum. In some songs, I might be the one who's

01:16just laying down a bed of harmony that sits in the back. And that's just kind of this cloud that hugs

01:21the whole tune together. Other times, I might be the one way out front and really driving the focal

01:28point of it, maybe the melody, maybe the solo, that sort of thing. So when it comes to playing

01:34with other guitar players, I start the same way as any other instrument. What is their role? What is my

01:40role? And how can we get along together? Okay. So a lot of guitar players, when they play with others,

01:46they just do whatever they want and they don't even consider what the other person is doing.

01:52So the first thing that you need to do is have your ears open to each other. Listen to what they're

01:57playing and see if what you're doing can either enhance that by adding to it, being very similar,

02:04or finding a completely different function. So if you take a look at some of the Fearless Flyers tunes,

02:10you'll see that Mark and I will often have differing roles. And one of the classic things

02:16that I do when I layer myself on songs is I will play some sort of single note or bubbly part,

02:24and I'll play some sort of chord part. Now, what I'll do right now, just for the sake of

02:29whatever, I'm just going to make something up. I'll play a C7. Okay. So we're going to play a C7 chord,

02:36and I will comp what I would say is just something that's a nice chord part that drives

02:43some rhythmic momentum and outlines the harmony.

02:45So that's just me kind of comping on a C7.

03:07There's one where I'm just straight up playing it. Now, if I wanted to add a second

03:20guitar part, it wouldn't really make sense for me to just go.

03:30Sure, that goes along with it. It's the same rhythm. It's the same chord. But what value does

03:36it add? Honestly, not a lot. Other than thickening up a little bit, sure. Now, if I'm playing with

03:41another guitar player, we might want to consider, is it that they want to outline the same amount of

03:47harmony but add some melodic sense? Or do they want to do something that just kind of adds something in

03:54a totally different realm? In this case, I'm going to switch to the neck pickup, and I'll play

04:00something a little more bubbly, kind of meters vibe. So there, it's something completely different

04:16then. They have different functions. They have different parts. This is a little more melodic.

04:29The tone is different. This one outlines the harmony. I said C7, but really, I'm playing a C9 chord.

04:36It's just different functions. Okay? So another way that somebody could play along with my chord

04:41thing. If I'm playing... Maybe they could play something that's even a little more melodic.

05:11You know, it still kind of fits in the rhythm realm, but it almost has like a right hand higher

05:21up on the keyboard sort of vibe to it. You could think of it almost like a horn section thing

05:27happening. But at the end of the day, we're just two guitar players trying to fit into the tune,

05:32trying to fit into the song. Now, of course, this is different when it comes to instrumental music

05:37versus vocal music. But at the core of it, it's not. Number one, make sure that you don't get in

05:44the way of the thing that's the focus. In many cases, it's the lead vocal. Other times, it's a

05:50lead guitar part. It's some other instrument playing the focal thing, the melody or the solo or whatever.

05:58And if I'm coming up with other guitar parts, I want to make sure that there are things that enhance

06:03what's happening in the melody, what's enhancing the thing that's in the focal point of the tune.

06:10So a lot of times... I mean, right now, I'm just kind of making stuff up because it's easy to do

06:15and there's nothing else to consider. But the one thing that I do want to make sure that your mindset

06:20is focused on is how can I do things that add to each other but not take away from the focal point?

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