Calypso Swing in Two Bars

The shape of it

Two bars, not one. The first bar is D-DU-xU-DU and the second bar is the island strum D-DU-UDU. The x is a muted strike: your fretting hand relaxes for a fraction of a second so the strings click instead of ring. That click is the whole personality of the pattern.

Counted in eighths across two bars: 1, 2-and, (mute)-and, and-3, and | 1, 2-and, and-3-and. If you count only one bar at a time you will put the muted stroke in the wrong place and it will sound like a stumble.

Playing the muted stroke

Put your left hand in a chord shape, then relax the fingers just enough that they rest on the strings without pressing them. Strike down-up across the deadened strings. The result is a percussive tick, not a note.

• Too much pressure: you hear a muffled chord.
• Too little pressure: you hear an open string ring.
• Just right: a click with no pitch at all. Practise it on a G7 shape, which gives you four fingers already on the strings.

Where calypso is used

Calypso and mento strums belong on material that already swings: two-chord vamps, children's songs, anything with a repeated chorus. Do not use it on slow ballads — the muted stroke will sound like an accident.

• Good: Oh! Susanna, two-chord vamps, sing-alongs where the room claps on 2 and 4.
• Bad: Amazing Grace, Aloha Oe, anything in 3/4.
• Tempo band: 96-126 bpm. Below 96 the swing collapses into a limp; above 126 the muted stroke disappears.

Right hand position

The calypso stroke is played near the neck joint rather than over the soundhole. Moving your hand toward the neck makes the sound drier and shorter, which is exactly what the muted stroke needs to sit against. On a soprano the difference is about 4 cm of travel; on a tenor it is closer to 8.