Rhythm

Rhythm is a key component in mastering the guitar. In fact I am convinced most technical problems can be traced to a lack of rhythmic control. As a teacher, I have also found that rhythm is also the hardest area to teach.

Over the years I have been struck by how some students seem to be naturally gifted with great rhythmic feel while others have to struggle to keep time. I have never believed in innate abilities and I attribute this disparity to the students’ musical backgrounds, and the evidence seems to support my view. Generally, students who have previously played in groups or bands or just played simple strumming styles tend to have a stronger intuitive feel for rhythm than those students who have not had these experiences.

But first, rhythmic mastery is not to be confused with reading rhythmic notation. That is an area in itself—the understanding of quarter notes, eighth notes, etc., and how to relate their values and durations to the beats in a bar.

Instead, rhythmic mastery is about feeling the beat, feeling the pulse, and knowing where to place your notes within the pulse in an ongoing time-line.

There are three stages to developing rhythmic mastery:

1. Learning to keep the basic beats. This is the 1, 2, 3, 4 in a 4/4 bar or the 1, 2, 3 in a 3/4 bar. The relative strength of each beat should be internalized. For instance, in a 4/4 bar, the “1” should be felt strongly as the first beat while the “3”, the second strongest beat. The student should be able to feel each bar as a unit and anticipate the “1” of each bar. Knowing where the “1” is is an essential skill for jazz musicians as they need to know when to change their chord scales as they improvise but it is no less critical for classical musicians. In fact it is a hallmark of good musicianship.
2. Each beat should be subdivided into its smallest component parts. For example, a piece with four 16th notes in each beat should be subdivided into four subdivisions within each beat, or a piece with triplet 8th notes should be subdivided into three subdivisions. These subdivisions should now be internalized within the main beats. To do this, I recommend tonguing each subdivision. This externalizes the subdivisions and assigns the beat to a part of the body other than the fingers playing the notes. This is especially important if a student has weak technical control in the fingers. Forcing the fingers to play to a beat set by the tonguing will establish a stronger rhythmic pulse and develop greater finger control. Letting weak fingers set the rhythm will at best, produce a haphazard rhythmic feel and at worst, cause the player to rush the tempo.
3. Once the main beats and subdivisions have been internalized, the pulse should be set free. It should not be rigid like the metronomic beat, but instead, should have a floating feel, with built-in tension-release points. In some types of music, especially in perpetual motion type passages, accent the off beats and make the beat “swing.” Over emphasizing the subdivisions in a rigid manner will produce the “sewing-machine” type of playing which I would avoid. This third stage is the hardest to master. Even among those students who have an intuitive sense for rhythm, their rhythmic feel is usually still too square and metrical. It is relatively easy to understand basic beat keeping and develop it with a metronome but knowing how to phrase linearly and “swing” the beat will take time. I recommend listening to the great pianists such as Vladimir Horowitz, Alicia de Larrocha, and Dinu Lipatti to get a better understanding of linear phrasing. My favorite example is Lipatti’s rendition of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

Combine your new-found rhythmic freedom with the principles of note-grouping I wrote about earlier, and you’re on your way to greater technical control and musicality.

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