I’LL CONFESS, THE greatest thing to ever happen in my career as a guitarist took place not in a practice room or classroom, or on a bandstand. It happened on the football field. I wanted to join my high school jazz band, but in order to do that, I also needed to be in the concert and marching bands, and since there was no room for an electric guitarist in either of those ensembles, I was ingloriously assigned to the bass drum. Thankfully, during my first band camp, a well-known drummer and music educator named Tommy Igoe must have sensed that I had a pretty decent sense of rhythm and reassigned me to the snare drum.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but learning to read the intricate 16th-note rhythms of a marching percussion ensemble would become the bedrock of my music education. Rhythm went from being a nebulous concept to a concrete, understandable formula. This supercharged not only my guitar playing but also my overall sight-reading and transcribing skills, as well as my concept of how songs and arrangements are put together and, most importantly, how grooves are built. As you may know, 16th notes are used extensively in many modern musical styles, especially funk, prog-rock and metal, as well as pop.