Mugwanti

Davide played this nice, but strikingly similar to an alarm clock, song in Batubar called “Mugwanti”.  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, but it was there that I got the idea that it would be pretty challenging and fun to learn the synth part on guitar.  So, I did and we performed it a couple of days later at Summer Sunscream in Cebu, Philippines.

In terms of the notes, it’s real simple – 95% of the notes are E-flats.  There are just a few B-flats thrown in for good measure (during the octaves descent in the even measures).  It’s the rhythm that’s tricky, but here it is notated for anyone who’ like to learn it.

The “key”, if you can call it that, is E flat.  And, I suppose that’s only because the original tune is centered in E-flat.  At first, I thought maybe this would warrant tuning the guitar down to E flat to get a natural resonance, but it’s totally not necessary.  Just playing the E flat is sufficient, plus it’s not the kind of lick where you’d be inadvertently hitting open strings or something like that.

If you look at the opening rhythm in the image above, you’ll notice there’s a sixteenth note followed by a sixteenth rest, followed by an eighth note.  Why’d I do it this way?  Because the opening note has a very light touch to it and that rest should be accentuated.  I could have also notated it, I suppose, as two eighth notes and marked the first note as staccato, but it’ more overt this way.

On those octave descents, notice the lines that are connecting the notes.  This is just to indicate the slide nature of the synth.  Actually, copying this exactly is super hard, especially the slides down.  Personally, I usually don’t play those.  But I do like to play the slide up from the eighth note in the following measure.  That’s much easier.

A quick note on the rhythm:  For the most part, it’s straightforward once you learn the pattern.  There’s only a little bit of syncopation at the very end, but it’s a common pattern:  the 3-3-2 pattern.  I don’t know the science behind this pattern, but it appears all over the place in popular music and among people who play-by-ear.  Is it due to an innate sense of rhythm in humans or just because it’s so popular that people unconsciously copy it?  I’m not sure.  But anyway, this rhythm is basically a collection of 8 even notes (like 8 eighth notes) where the rhythmic stress appears on the 1st, 4th, and 6th notes.  If you were to tap this out, you could count 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2 where you’re stressing each of the “1″s:  1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2.  If you become aware of this pattern, you’ll notice it all over the place in popular music.  In this case, the pattern is compressed into two beats, so each of the counts is a 16th note, not an 8th note.  So, have a look at the three arrows above:

• The first points at an eight note tied to a sixteenth note (that’s 1-2-3).
• The second points to a sixteenth note tied to an eighth note (that’s another 1-2-3).
• The third points to an eighth note (that’s the final 1-2).

By the way, this is the best way to notate this passage…much better than two dotted eighth notes followed by an eighth, for example.

Another trick is finding a good synth sound on the guitar that nicely compliments the bright lead sound of the synth in the song.  Lots of modern guitar software will allow you to do this.