It makes them turn around and stare.
Me, I play dance tunes. My favorite double-stop is the open-string octave. I take the advice of Mike Woods, who says, "Make the notes rhyme."
It makes them get up and dance.
Dance tunes are in G, C, and D. There are open G, C, and D strings. Coincidence? We think not.
When you're playing in D, you have a lot of D notes, especially on strong beats. When you're playing a fretted, closed D, hitting the open D below it, at the same time, gives that note the extra oomph that makes a dancer move.
How often does this really happen? An example's close at hand. Let's walk through Yankee Doodle and thump the first beat of each measure.
YANkee Doodle WENT to town, a-
RIding on a POny
STUCK a feather IN his cap and
CALLED it macaROni
How many of those are G's? All but IN and CALLED.
You can always rhyme a G with the open G below it. Done on the right beat, it's like tapping your foot, but with your hand.
(Dance fiddlers go this idea one better, cross-tuning their fiddles to give them even more easy, open-string double stops.)
What about the two, remaining strong beats? You have choices. (After all, shouldn't a quintissentially American tune be all about choice?) The first is not to worry about them. You had no ornaments before, now you nearly have a verse full. Let the dancers figure out where those other two beats are.
A second is to emphasize them with some other ornament. "IN" is a C note and a C chord. Ripping through a strong, three-note version of that C chord emphasizes the C on its top. Doing it with a two-finger C also keeps up the "open-G" theme you've been pushing.
Without much work at all, you now have a nice, strong double stop on the first beat of all but one measure. One down, one to go.
You're down to CALLED. "Can't I pleeeeze emphasize that, too?" Okay. Sure.
- You can use a closed-form double stop, fretting the G string to add an A below the melody's F#.
- You can use the open A above it instead. For rhythmic double-stops, open strings rule. When in doubt, try the string below and the string above, see which one sounds good and toss it in.
- You can use another ornament, say tremolo, or a quick slide down from the G, one fret above.
- You're feeling taciturn? You can leave the note out -- throw in a rest, or tap the top of your instrument for that beat.
- You can even just use the low G again. It's a theme. It's a little dissonant, but you're not here to wow listeners and music critics, you're here to propel dancers.
You can try a different ornament every time through to see if anyone else in the band notices.
Another variant on this them is thumping that low G for the first two beats of every line.
YAN-KEE Doodle WENT to town, a-
RI-DING on a POny
STUCK A feather IN his cap and
CALLED it macaROni.
(Trying to find a way to squeeze in CALLED IT sounds strained to me, as though it's ornament for the sake of ornament. Your mileage may vary.)
Once you start looking, that rhyme under the melody note is everywhere you want to be.
