If I told you there was one thing that would make your playing sound great, feel great and your ability to recover after any little mistakes and fluffs really strong, would you want to have this skill as fast as possible?
Rhythm is the underpinning of all music. Yet sometimes it’s not even clear what we mean by rhythm or how to develop our understanding and sense of rhythm and timing. This module gives you the tools to get a clear understanding of what rhythm is, how to develop your skill in rhythm, and how to apply that rhythm for guitar.
I took piano lessons for years at school, but never really understood how to participate in musical situations beyond memorising monkey-style what my pieces of music sounded like. I didn’t have any meaningful understanding of rhythm outside of those pieces of music. If your only exposure to rhythm is a gradual byproduct of all the pieces of music or songs that you learn, it will take a long time to develop confidence with rhythm. When you understand rhythm, you can keep your place, keep time with others and with songs you may be playing along to. You become much more consistent. This makes everything more enjoyable! You can play all the correct notes and chords, but if you are hesitant in playing them and inconsistent with rhythm, it’s very hard to make it sound and feel good. Many guitar players are interested in building speed, but whilst we do want to develop the ability to play fast when that’s appropriate, speed is of no use to you if your timing is poor.
Sometimes people have concerns that they don’t have a natural sense of rhythm. You can train and develop this with the material we’ll look at. Your current skill level with rhythm is not fixed and can absolutely improve with the rest activities.
