You can never have too much rhythmic confidence and range! You don’t want to be stuck with the same three strumming patterns for all situations, whether you want arrange your own songs or join in jam sessions.
When you’ve explored this material, you will be equipped to play at different speeds confidently. You will also have stylistic range so that you can play the kind of accompaniment to suit rock, folk, country and latin styles.
For creating variety in your own material or contributing in bands, jams and collaborations, you want to be versatile, and you want to be able to play in time at a slow tempo and at a fast tempo. It’s actually not necessarily easier to play with groove and feel at a slow tempo. The examples on this page have different speeds written on them, and you want to work towards being able to play comfortably at those different tempi.
Go through each of the following examples.
- Make sure you understand the notation. If there’s a chord shape or co-ordination you need to review and build up, make a note of that. There are 3-4 repeats written, but keep each example going for the duration of the rhythm track. Playing it 3-4 times won’t really build up your rhythm skills.
- Application: you’re aiming to work towards playing each example with the drum track that goes with it, but work on each rhythm slower while you’re getting used to them. Play with muted strings as an intermediary site to work on getting your right hand going.
- Integration: Go through each example again, but use different chords. See if you can play each rhythm 20 bpm faster and 20bpm slower. See if you can switch from one example to the next playing them all at 90bpm, 100bpm, 110bpm.
- Light Rock
2. Folk/Acoustic
3. Country Waltz – Triplet Feel
4. Latin Feel
