How To Practice And Work On Your Rhythm Skills When You’re Away From Your Guitar
By Allen Hopgood
Rhythm – your guitar playing won’t mean anything without it. Sure, you can sit down and practice rhythm along with a metronome or drum machine when you’re at home practising with your guitar. But how can you practice your rhythm chops, when you’re away from your guitar? When you’re on the bus to work or school or driving to work?
In these moments when your guitar is not on hand, you’ll learn below that there are many opportunities to practice these skills. As you go about your day, there are several things you can easily do to improve your rhythm awareness and timing.
If this area is relatively new for you don’t worry about complicated rhythms at first. Just focus on basic rhythmic values. Below are basic rhythms that will not only get you started, but also as you will discover, make up a majority of your favourite songs:
- Whole notes (worth 4 beats). This is one note or chord played on beat 1 of the measure and held for a count of 4.
- Half notes equal 2 beats. In a measure of 4 beats these notes are played on beats 1 and 3. They are held for a count of 2.
- Quarter notes (worth 1 beat). There are (4) quarter notes played on each beat in a measure of 4/4.
- Eighth notes are worth a half beat each. Often, and for our purposes here in this article, you will find them in pairs or groups of 4. In many popular songs you will often hear the bass player, playing an eighth note rhythm throughout the song.
See the diagram below for a complete understanding of these basic rhythms that you will be working with away from your guitar.
A great way to develop your rhythm skills away from your guitar is to listen to the songs you like and know well, as you go throughout your day. This can be any music you like.
As your driving along in your car, simply start by trying to ‘feel’ the rhythm. At this stage, do not try to decipher what the actual rhythm is. I mean, do not concern yourself whether it’s a quarter or an eighth note you are listening to. Just feel the rhythm at first.
Try to tap along with the beat of the song on the steering wheel. Feel for the pulse of the song – 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. Then once this becomes comfortable, try and count out loud just saying ‘1’ as you tap along. Feeling and saying the ‘1’ helps you to really lock into the rhythm. The first beat is often the most emphasised beat of the entire measure. So getting this down is a real key for helping you to, not only keep your place as you’re playing along with music, but also aids in solidifying your internal rhythm.
Once you have the first beat locked on, you can experiment with the rhythms above and count them out as you tap along to your favourite songs. I recommend you tap the steering wheel or dashboard as its hard to drive and tap your foot.
Another useful thing you can do to practice your rhythm playing, while you are away from your guitar is, when you are sitting at traffic lights and waiting to turn a corner, lock your tapping into the rhythm of the indicator. Here you can practice keeping in time with the indicator or make up your own rhythms using the indicator as a drum beat.
Don’t worry, as people in the car next to you will think you are enjoying some music. Besides, you are working on your music rhythm skills. So their opinion of you, if they think what you’re doing looks odd, shouldn’t matter to you.
Obviously, if you are on a bus, you can practice the rhythms on your legs or your bag. I only recommend ‘drumming’ on the seat in front of you if no one’s sitting there. This practice applies equally well to when you’re on a train or plane.
You can also work on your rhythm practice while you are out walking, listening to your favourite songs. If you don’t have your headphones with you, use your footsteps as the pulse. Four steps equals one measure of 4 beats. Practice your whole, half, quarter and eighth note rhythms, along with your footsteps, while tapping your legs as you walk.
If you are exercising at the gym, use the rhythm of your movements and motions when you are using a treadmill, exercise bike or rowing machine as your tempo. This can be done with or without music. Really, rhythm is everywhere and can be found all throughout nature. You can literally practice your rhythms anywhere, when you’re away from your guitar. With the hum and murmur of machinery. Even in the cycles of your washing machine.
You may know all the great guitar chords or be able to play all the fancy licks that impress people. However, if you can’t play in time or keep time it’s not going to hold people’s attention. Rhythm is vitally important to you as a guitar player and musician. Without it, you have nothing.
Allen Hopgood is a musician and guitar educator on the Gold Coast of Australia. Having shared the stage with some of Australia’s leading musicians, as a certified guitar teacher, he is the director of Gold Coast School of Guitar, where he offers his students a complete guitar learning experience.