I am playing on a song with has a waltz feel. If you think in terms of oom-pah-pah, I am chopping on the pah-pah. The best sound I have come up with is very simple, just doing chops on the pah-pah and nothing else. To do this I am not pre-fretting the notes as I normally do, just a press of the fretting hand right with picking it and the release a smidge after. When I was fretting on the down beat (the oom of oom-pah-pah), it wasn’t as crisp sounding on the front end.
While it works for this current song I could see where this could be tough to coordinate on a faster song. Anybody else use the just-in-time fretting for simple waltzy chops? Any tips for alternate methods?
Advice for waltzy chops
You have the basic idea for the standard waltz, but as it speeds up it might become 12/8 ( 123, 232, 323, 423) or shuffle so there the first 2 and 4. But I would just stick to the rule of thumb that chops are the snare drum or chop opposite the bass.