We all struggle to play songs and one of the root causes is usually rhythm. As Gershwin sort of said “If you haven’t got rhythm, you’ve got nothing”. This online course starts from with the basics.
Overview
Rhythm is the pulse, drive, groove and feel of songs – it’s that one element that gets your foot tapping. An audience would instinctively know if you’ve got it! If you want to play along with others, or simply just improve your own playing, you need rhythm – it’s an essential skill to be able to read it and, as importantly, apply to the guitar.
We’ll look at counting, Time Signatures, note and rest values and symbols, reading rhythm notation, practising with a metronome and playing some sections of classic songs and their riffs. We’ll also explore listening to rhythm patterns and writing them down. Obviously we’ll be playing the guitar and so, in order to make rhythm realfor us guitarists, we’ll be touching on strumming and fingerpicking chords and the underlying techniques involved including guidance on changing chords in time.
Level 1 is the first of three levels for beginners. We’ll slowly delve into more aspects of rhythm in the higher levels. Level 1 provides a solid grounding for the two higher levels and should be considered for all player standards (we then move into the intermediate levels).
You should be armed with a metronome for this course.
Online course lessons:
Two lessons, each 75 mins long.
Note: these are live, online, interactive group sessions.
Lesson format
We try to layer these lessons so that we cover off the more straight-forward elements early on and gradually build up to the more complex subjects. The bulk of each lesson is teaching (usually with a minimum number of questions taken along the way) but we dedicate the end slot for Q&A. With the lessons being online, assuming you are on mute, you can play along with our tutor or practise an exercise without interfering with anyone; if the tutor asks, and you’re so inclined, you can go on-screen for one-on-one coaching in front of the group.
Follow-on materials
We’ve always recognised that the real work takes place after a course and so we provide a comprehensive set of materials for home practice; these vary from course to course and can include: additional PDFs, lesson TABs, backing tracks and snippet videos of examples/exercises used during the lesson. Over and above learning the song(s) our objective is to give you the tools to self-improve.
Course suitability
This course is for relative beginners upwards. Acoustic, electric and bass players are all welcome (check out our FAQs’ Skill levels and suitable courses). If you know some basic open chords (or arpeggios on the bass) then you’re good to go. There’s something for everyone in all our courses and the follow-on materials should help in both practising the song as well as understanding and applying any techniques and relevant theory covered.
Call us for a chat at any time
Whatever level you are, you’ll have lots of takeaways to work on later. If you’d like to go through the course please call or email.