Shots, holds, rests and pushes

A style plays the same groove bar after bar, and that is what makes it a style. But listen to a real band: at the end of a phrase they all hit one chord together and stop dead, or hold a chord out under the singer, or drop out for a bar so the drummer or the soloist is alone, or come in with the next chord a little before the beat. Arrangers write these moments into the chart, and they are what make a band sound arranged rather than looped. The chord sheet has a mark for each.

Typing the marks

Dots after a harmony stop the band; carets before it bring it in early:

A push can be joined to a stop: ^G7. is a shot an eighth note early. Under each marked harmony, a word says what the band does there (shot, hold, rest, push); point at it for the whole sentence. N.C. keeps its own dots: they are part of its name.

Try it: press Ctrl+N and type these bars, one per bar:

C   ^F   G7.   Am..   F G7...   ^^C   F G7   C

• bar 2: the band plays F on the “and” of beat 4 of bar 1, an eighth note early, and lets it ring over the bar line;
• bar 3: the whole band strikes G7 once, with a kick and a crash, and then nothing until bar 4;
• bar 4: Am struck and held for the whole bar;
• bar 5: F in the style for two beats, then silence where G7 is;
• bar 6: C a sixteenth note early;
• bars 7 and 8: the style again.

Setting them from a menu

Right-click a bar and open Band on G7 (there is one for each harmony in the bar) to pick Shot (.), Hold (..) or Rest (…), and Push (^) or Push a sixteenth (^^). As the style goes and On the beat take the marks off. Like every change on the sheet, the band plays again, Ctrl+Z takes it back, and the marks are copied with the bars, as text too.

The music

Shots. A shot (also a hit, a stab or a kick) is a chord the whole band plays at once, short and accented, followed by silence. Big band charts are full of them, the drummer playing them with the band on the crash cymbal and the bass drum. A run of shots, one at the start of each bar or two, is called stop-time: the band plays only the hits and leaves the rest of the bar to the singer, the soloist or a tap dancer. The verses of Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man are a famous stop-time groove. In Ferrous Lineup each player strikes the shot its own way, the piano its chord, the bass its note, the guitar a strum, a little harder than the style, and the drums play a kick and a crash. The harmony is still there for whoever plays over the silence.

Holds. A hold is a chord struck and held: at the end of a phrase, under the last word of a line, or to let a soloist play freely over one harmony. It is not a fermata: a fermata stops the beat, and the band waits for the conductor, while a hold lasts exactly until the next harmony, and the beat goes on underneath.

Rests. A rest is the band dropping out, drums too. Arrangers call it a break: in jazz the band stops for a bar or two and the soloist plays alone, and in funk and hip hop, the bars where only the drummer played gave the “breakbeat” its name. Write the drums’ break yourself in the piano roll, or play it with You play (see Locking a track, and playing your part).

Pushes. A push, or anticipation, is a chord played before the beat it belongs to and held over it. Without it, the downbeat is the strongest moment of the bar; with it, the chord comes early and beat 1 is silent, and the music leans forward. That is syncopation, an accent off the beat, and pushes are everywhere in pop, rock, funk and Latin music: in the salsa tumbao, the bass plays the next chord’s root on beat 4, held over the bar line. A push of a sixteenth note is subtler, the pull of funk and fast Latin music.

The caret looks like the marcato, the accent musicians write over a note to play it strongly, and a push is played with an accent.