Guitar Article Written by “Friend Of Mike Walsh” 

HOW TO BUILD YOUR FEELING FOR RHYTHM

(Beginner level)

 By: Nejc Vidmar

When you're playing any musical instrument, the most important thing is to play in the rhythm of the song you're playing. If you hit the wrong note here and there, that's not that big of a problem, but if you fall out of rhythm that is an unforgivable mistake. For beginners it's usually hard to keep playing in time, since playing the parts alone might be overwhelming.

What good musicians are doing to feel the rhythm, the pulse of the song, is tapping the foot in the rhythm of the song? Some of them even incorporate it into performance. The example that comes to mind is Angus Young's famous »duck walk«. Yes, it is a trademark performing move of his, but if you watch it closely, you'll notice that he's always in perfect sync with the drummer. What might look like a top notch performance act, is in a way, his way of feeling the rhythm. There are of course countless other musicians who do their own thing, but it's not that hard to notice when someone's really »feeling« the music they're playing.

So, what makes tapping the foot so important? Well, basically it is the ability to play the parts right rhythmically. Let me put it the other way. If you can't keep tapping the foot in rhythm while you're playing, you don't really know the parts that you're playing. You might know all the notes and you might be technically able to play it, but you don't really understand how it works rhythmically. The parts you play may sound right even, there's no doubt about it, but your playing is nothing more than guessing where the tones have to be. If you can't do that it's nearly impossible to have the groove in your playing. And what is playing without the groove? Nothing more that passionless sequence of notes that will probably left the audience unimpressed.

So, where to start if you can't tap your foot while playing. First step would be developing the ability to clap your hands while tapping your foot to a metronome beat. At first you should clap only on some of the beats, but keep track of where the first beat is, since it's very important to develop feeling for length of the bar. For example, an easy start would be to start in 4/4 time measure. Clap on 1st and 3rd beat, but keep track which is which, since you want to clap for a certain number of bars and not stop in the middle of one. Then take a bar where you clap on 1st and 3rd beat and add another bar where you clap on 2nd and 4th beat. Now you've extended the length of one round and it should be easier to keep track of where the bar ends. On the other hand, you have to be more focused on counting.

Next step would be to add claps on some of the off-beats. A good start would be to playing all the off-beats, just to develop a feeling for syncopation. Your counting should change a bit as well. To be precise, you'll have to count 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, instead of 1 2 3 4. Off-beats are now on »and's«. When you can do that, you should move on to combining clapping on a beat and off-beat within one bar. One common harmonic rhythm would be clap on the 1st beat, followed by clap on the off-beat after the second beat, i.e. »one« and »two and«. Later you can add another bar where you clap on »one« and »three and«. From here on, you can make any combination of beats and off-beats, just to not get hooked on one pattern too quickly.

This practice routine might sound like a funny one to some students, but only until they've tried it. On many occasions, my students saw, that it was harder than what they've expected. Also, they saw that roots of many difficulties, that they've been experiencing, lay in their rhythmic (un)ability, instead of, as they thought, technical level of their playing.

This article was written by a professional Slovenian guitar teacher and coach Nejc Vidmar. During the years, he taught many guitarists with all sorts of problems, but a very common one to a vast majority of them was rhythmic »literacy« and rhythmic feeling.