Here is one of several posts in which I will provide an overview of the information at the beginning of each song post. Eventually, there will be posts about each of these concepts in depth.
Slashes are often used to show beat in notated music where there is improvisation:
A soloist would know that there are three groups of four beats during which the D minor chord would be played and then it would switch to a dominant A7 chord.
I like to use a similar format for teaching song accompaniment, but without the staff. One popular way of notating is putting the chords over the lyrics, lining up the chord changes with the syllable on which it happens.
Dm
Joshua fought the battle at Jericho
A Dm A
Jericho, Jericho
Dm
Joshua fought the battle at Jericho
A Dm
And the walls came tumbling down
The one problem I have encountered with this kind of notation is in jam sessions, if I don't know the song and the singer doesn't keep the beat very well because they are used to singing along with the recording.1 Whereas if I have slash notation to show me where the chords change according to the beat, then I can confidently accompany someone, even if I don't know the song. Then we all sound all right.
When I am in a teaching situation where we are emphasizing participatory practices and we have people with different levels of experience, I put less emphasis on staff notation (though I often provide it for those who are comfortable with it), and more on slash notation. If someone has reading processing issues or attention issues or executive function issues, they may still have challenges following staff notation. I usually have all my students take turns doing a "follow the bouncing ball" sort of job, where they point to the slashes as the rest of the class plays. It gives everyone practice in making their eyes follow a simple form of notation.
If you are just starting out and have no familiarity with any kind of notation, here's how it works:
One slash / is a microbeat. I wrote more about this in my post on meter, but for now let's just say that the microbeat is what you tap your foot to or if you were to walk to the beat, what you would step to.2
The vertical lines | and | simply are there to help your eyes group beats as your ears automatically do.
A chord is valid until a new chord appears:
C (<- -keep playing C - ->)G7
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
But it's helpful to have a chord at the beginning of each line, even if it doesn't change:
G7 C
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
Each line represents a phrase. A phrase in music is similar to a phrase in language, though the lyrics and the music may not always line up perfectly, because that can be musically interesting.
What I give my students looks like this:
F
Skip, skip, skip to my lou |/ / |/ / |
C7
Skip, skip, skip to my lou |/ / |/ / |
F
Skip, skip, skip to my lou |/ / |/ / |
C7 F
Skip to my lou, my darling |/ / |/ / |
If the first word in the phrase does not line up with the first chord in the line, then I underline the word that does fall on the first beat, like so:
In this example, "morn" of morning happens right when you play that first D minor chord. We notate it this way, because we want to keep lyrics together in a way that makes linguistic sense and we want to keep the chords together in a way that makes musical sense.
With this kind of simple notation, even absolute beginners have a way to quickly understand what and how to play — even if it is just the microbeat or just the macrobeat, instead of some fancy strumming — and can get started, even as they are gaining familiarity with a new song.
That is, they still need to work on their basic timing, but can match others. More on that issue and how to fix it in a future post.
Walking to a beat is great practice if you feel you are rhythmically challenged. Get friends involved to help you become more aware of what to do.