Enquiries or Bookings - Rhythm, the relationship of musical events to each other through time, or more specifically our ability to execute rhythm accurately, is often what makes the difference between a performance being amazing, compelling, so so or just plain bad!
When teachers work with students we can focus on learning, notes, riffs or songs, theory or technique without paying this essential element the attention it deserves. Why is that?
Is it because it’s the hardest element of music? Is it that many musicians and teachers are dissatisfied with their own rhythmic abilities? Because it is definitely measurably right or wrong, good or bad?
Whatever the reason (I’ve seen examples of those three and many more) I have found without exception that good rhythm is a reward of sustained effort and hard work. When music students inevitably begin to focus upon playing in time everything else starts to improve along with their time sense. Tone, technique and musicality all begin to coalesce into a “sound”, we begin to speak music through our instrument more fluently. I’ve observed this without exception, regardless of instrument over twenty years of teaching.
So how? How do we improve our sense of time, feel, rhythm? Two ideas to start you off.
1) When you have learned the notes for a piece of music try playing it along to a recording, drum loop or metronome. If it’s hard, slow it down and break the piece into short sections and play each until comfortable. If if I had a dollar for every student who had practiced a piece but couldn’t execute it in time I’d be a very rich man! If you think you can play it, try it alongside an external rhythm source, you’ll soon find out where any tricky parts are, meaning that you can zero in on trouble spots and make the necessary adjustments.
2) Become familiar with the subdivisions of the beat and how to count them aloud. Quarter notes get 1, 2, 3, 4. Eighth notes are counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Sixteenth’s, triplets, quintuplets all have their own solfege syllables that help us to internalize rhythms and feels. Any good teacher of music can help you with this and if you are truly, honestly looking to sound better on your instrument working on playing the correct notes AT THE RIGHT TIME will undoubtedly help.
