Music at its simplest involves:
What to play
Notes (includes single notes, notes played together and absence of notes)
When to play it
Rhythm (when should the notes be played and how long should they last)
(of course, there are MANY other elements involved including: how loud should the note be, what sound should we use? What structure should the song follow, how dense should the texture be? etc etc.)
What is rhythm?
Rhythm is where the fun is!
It’s what makes us dance, groove and feel music. Rhythm allows us to strum chords, play songs and play with other people.
Without rhythm, there is no music 🙁
But I don’t have “natural rhythm”…
Can you count to 4? Do you have a pulse?
Then you can learn rhythms and make music!
Try this set of exercises to start developing your sense of rhythm.
Step 1
- Count “1234” focusing on counting even spaces between the beats.
- Then clap along with each beat as you count it.
Step 2
Miss out some of the claps, but keep counting “1 2 3 4”
- clap on 1 only
- clap on 1 2 3
- clap on 2 3 4
- clap on 1 3
- clap on 2 4
- clap on 1 4
You can also try tapping these rhythms (eg on your leg, desk etc).
Step 3
Introduce tapping your foot on each beat and repeat Step 1 and 2.
This step is considerably more difficult – so be patient 🙂
Step 4
Apply all this with your guitar – use a chord, a note, a series of chords.
Keep counting out loud but PLAY the note/chord, rather than clapping.
Again, this will be tricky to start with, but be patient and it’ll come together.
Have fun with all this, and if you’d like some help, give us a shout – we love helping students with this!