Essential Rhythm Concept Explained – The SECRET To Steady Strumming
In today’s lesson, I’m going to teach you essential music theory for rhythm guitar.
We will learn how to count quarter notes vs eighth notes. We will learn to clap along to music and count to the beat. We will also learn how to apply counting to our strumming to improve our overall sense of rhythm.
This Lesson Is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series
- Part 1 – How To Count Music For Beginners
- Part 3 – A Simple Trick That Makes Long & Fast Strumming Patterns Easier
Most of the time when people think about music theory, they think about scales and chord formulae and other pitch-related stuff. Rhythm is just as integral a part of theory and today I’m going to show you the very basics!
The lesson begins with an easy music theory lesson on the fundamentals of rhythm.
We start with a measure, which is simply a group of beats. Our measure is divided into four beats.
Each of those beats is a quarter of the measure, therefore they are quarter notes. We count them “1 2 3 4”
From there we can subdivide those quarter notes into eighth notes. Our counting is now “1+2+3+4+”
We practice eighth note counting along to a song, “You are my Sunshine,” and then we apply this to some strumming patterns and learn how to properly count our strumming patterns to improve our rhythm on guitar.
Your assignment today is to practice playing eighth note rhythm on your guitar with muted strings along to some music.
Hope you enjoy this lesson and I’ll see you next time with the third installment of this series!
-James
