Category: Rhythm Guitar

October 22, 2010

7 Great Ways to Improve Your Rhythm Guitar Playing

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Rhythm guitar playing is a crucial skill for all guitarists.  Here we will look at 7 great ways to improve your rhythm guitar playing.

Let’s dig straight in…

1.  Become clap happy. Practice clapping different rhythmic patterns.  If you can’t clap a rhythmic pattern, how can you ever expect to be able to play it on guitar?

You will find it much easier to master rhythm when you isolate and focus on it.  This way you get to focus just on the rhythm─you don’t have to worry about performing it on guitar.  You can apply it to the guitar later.

Below you will find some basic rhythms to get you going.

Repeat each rhythmic pattern several times.

Clap and count out loud as you perform these examples.  If you are not sure how to count these rhythms see my blog post called Guitar Tutorial:Basics of Rhythm Explained .

I would highly recommend that you practice clapping these rhythms with a metronome.

Once you are comfortable clapping the above rhythm patterns, it’s time to grab your guitar.

2.  Play the above 18 rhythm examples on a single string. So now instead of clapping, you simply pick the open third string (G string) with the above rhythm patterns.

3.  Now apply the rhythm exercises to one chord. Start with a basic chord like G major.

4. Now add in some other chords to form a chord progression. For example play through each example using G major, C major and D major chords.  Play each chord for one measure and then repeat the same rhythm pattern with the next chord.

5. Now apply the rhythm patterns to other chord progressions. For example try C Am Dm G; D Bm Em A, etc.

6. Experiment with other rhythm patterns. The examples shown here are a small sample of what is possible rhythmically.  You will notice that that I did not include any rests, so try adding in rests to the examples above.  Also add in triplets and sixteenth notes. Have fun with them.

7. Listen to a wide variety of music. The more different styles of music you listen to the better.  Different styles of music will expose you to different rhythms.  In addition to listening to different styles of music, why not learn to play them too?

When you start to focus on your rhythm guitar playing it will begin to improve.  The more of these tips you use the better your rhythm guitar playing will become.

Of course, one other thing you will want to do to improve your rhythm guitar playing is to improve your chord vocabulary.

If you only know a few ways to play a chord, then your choices are limited to those few chords.

As you expand your chord knowledge you will have so much more to choose from.

Imagine you decided to write a short story in a foreign language.  Imagine trying to do this when you only know a handful of words.  How riveting do you think your story will be?

Now imagine doing the same thing with a vocabulary ten times as large.  Which one do you think would be easier?

Well it’s the same thing with guitar.  If you want to create your own cool-sounding chord accompaniments, you will probably find it a lot easier with a larger chord vocabulary.

The larger your chord vocabulary, the faster you will learn songs.  If you know how to play the chords in a song before you start to learn the song, all you have to do is learn the strumming patterns. Are you beginning to see how much time this will save you?

To take your guitar chords to the next level, check out 7 Secrets to Master Any Guitar Chord Super-Fast.

October 20, 2010

Guitar Tutorial: Basics of Rhythm Explained

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A basic understanding of rhythm is crucial for all guitar players.  This is true whether you play guitar for pleasure, or have much loftier goals.

When you don’t have the basics of rhythm down, you will find it much harder to play songs than it needs to be.

For example, if a chord is supposed to be played on the 4th beat and you strum it a bit late, it will sound wrong.  The right notes, or chords, played at the wrong time are actually the wrong notes.

So let’s get started…

Meter

Music is usually organized in a repeatable accent pattern known as meter.  The repeatable accent pattern will consist of a combination of strong and weak beats.

For example:

S = strong

W = weak

2/4 time consists of:

S W

3/4 time consists of:

S W W

4/4 time consists of:

S W M W (M stands for medium weak)

5/4 time consists of:

S W S W W

or

S W W  S W

Time Values

The most common time signature, 4/4, (pronounced four-four) is often abbreviated with a fancy “C” and called common time.  In 4/4, the whole note receives four beats or counts.  The half note receives two beats and the quarter note receives one beat.  Eighth notes each receive half of a beat.

Note Durations

Eighth notes are sometimes written without connecting beams:

The whole note receives 4 beats; the half note receives 2 beats; a quarter note receives 1 beat and an eighth note receives 1/2 of a beat; a sixteenth note receives 1/4 of a beat and each part of the triplet receives 1/3 of a beat.

Time Signatures

A time signature is used to indicate the strong and weak beats in a measure and also which note value receives one beat.  In Simple Time (2/2, 2/4, 2/8, 3/2, 3/4, 3/8, 4/2, 4/4, 4/8), the top number of the time signature indicates the number of beats per measure while the bottom number indicates the type of note that receives one beat.  For example:

Here are some simple examples in 4/4 for you to practice.  Count these examples out loud as you clap the rhythms.

That covers the basics of rhythm.  In our next post we will expand on this and apply it to the guitar.

July 21, 2010

How to Develop Rock-Solid Rhythm Guitar Time-Keeping Skills

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Rhythm is a crucial aspect of guitar playing that every guitarist needs to master.

But let’s face it.  It’s easy to get caught up learning new guitar techniques and working on guitar solos.

If you play a song accurately note-for-note, but play those notes on the wrong part of the beat—it will sound wrong.  After all, you are playing the chords or notes where they are not supposed to be.

Here is a deceptively simple, yet powerful exercise you can do to develop solid time-keeping skills on the guitar so you can become great at rhythm guitar.

Bury the Beat

The first key to becoming a great rhythm guitar player is to develop a great sense of time.

What does this really mean?

It means to be able to tap your foot at a consistent tempo.  Most beginner guitar players are able to play in time for a while, but then start to drift in and out of time.   Sometimes guitarists will unintentionally speed up and/or slow down at certain parts of songs.

The best way to develop a solid unshakable sense of rhythm is to become great at what I like to call burying the beat.

First you need a metronome.  If you don’t already have one, I would highly recommend that you go to your favourite music store and purchase one this week.  They are inexpensive and will help your guitar playing immensely.

If you don’t have a metronome right now, don’t worry.  Here is a link to a free online metronome:

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

So do you have your metronome ready?  Great!

Here is how to perform the exercise.

Set the metronome at 60 beats per minute.  Now all you do is clap along with the metronome.  Count out loud as you clap.

So you would count each clap and say:

One, two, three, four.

Burying the Beat, counting four-four time

But here is the trick: you want to be able to bury the sound of the beat.

By this I mean that your goal is to clap louder than the metronome and be able to clap at precisely the right time so that you can’t actually hear the metronome click.

When you are able to clap so that the metronome clicks can’t be heard, you are playing perfectly at 60 beats per minute.  This will take some practice to do.  Once you can do this at 60 beats per minute try moving the metronome up a few notches.  So try it at 65 beats per minute.  Try it at 70 beats per minute, etc.  The idea here is to be able to bury the metronome clicks at any tempo.  Once you can do this you will have a good solid sense of rhythm.

One other thing to do is to move the metronome to slower tempos.  This will actually make the exercise harder.  Why? The exercise will become trickier because there are now longer spaces between each click.  As the beats get slower, you will want to adjust your counting.  At the slower tempos you may want to count off eighth notes or even sixteenth notes.  So you would count:

1 +   2 +   3 +   4 +

or

1 e   +   ah    2 e   +   ah    3 e   +   ah     4 e   +   ah

Bear in mind that even though you are counting eighth or sixteenth notes, you are still clapping only on the beat.  So you are clapping on the “1, 2, 3, 4″.  The eighth or sixteenth notes are really just place holders for you.  They break down the space between the next beat making it easier for you keep time at slow tempos.

Once you can do this exercise at various tempos, you can grab your guitar and do this exercise with a guitar chord.  Once you can do it with one chord, try applying it to a chord progression.  After this is nailed down, you can start to experiment with different time signatures and different chord progressions.

But here is the trick: you want to be able to bury the sound of the beat.

By this I mean that your goal is to clap louder than the metronome and be able to clap at precisely the right time so that you can’t actually hear the metronome click.

When you are able to clap so that the metronome clicks can’t be heard, you are playing perfectly at 60 beats per minute. This will take some practice to do. Once you can do this at 60 beats per minute try moving the metronome up a few notches. So try it at 65 beats per minute. Try it at 70 beats per minute, etc. The idea here is to be able to bury the metronome clicks at any tempo. Once you can do this you will have a good solid sense of rhythm.

One other thing to do is to move the metronome to slower tempos. This will actually make the exercise harder. Why? The exercise will become trickier because there are now longer spaces between each click. As the beats get slower, you will want to adjust your counting. At the slower tempos you may want to count off eighth notes or even sixteenth notes. So you would count:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

or

1 e + ah 2 e + ah 3 e + ah 4 e + ah

Once you can do this exercise at various tempos, you can grab your guitar and do this exercise with a chord. Once you can do it with one chord, try applying it to a chord progression. After this is nailed down, you can start to experiment with different time signatures.