metronome?

Hi i just played guitar 2 monthes ago, i've been praticing a couple of hours here and there. I got use to changing chords but the biggest sturggle i have is keeping the same rhytum with my strumming patterns. Even when i do just down down down down, i am not able to follow songs. *i use a online metronome*

I've been playing for 10 months, and I'm starting to be able to play a consistant rythm while changing chords.

Keep practicing. It's really the only way to get better.
Another question is are there any faq in playing high by james blunt.

http://forums.guitarnoise.com/viewtopic.php?t=18088

Practice, practice, practice. There is just no other way to get it. Good luck.

Like Kent and Mike say, it's down to practice. One thing you can do tough, is to focus all your attention on the practice of the strumming, and forget about the fretting hand temporarily. Just practice your strumming pattern on one or two chords that you find easy enough to not think about too much (Am and C for example, if those work for you, or even just alternate between a chord and open strings). Start with just one chord for as long as you can bear and then try the change while focusing as much as you can on the strumming hand. Don't worry about fudging the chords themselves, just keep the rhythm going no matter what - that is the bit you're training (a fudged chord with a solid rhythm is much less distracting from a song than an impeccable chord played with a dodgy rhythm anyway).

When I first learned how to strum, I left the guitar out of it completely. Just sit down and "strum" against your leg, in time to a metronome. Believe it or not, it worked!

When I first learned how to strum, I left the guitar out of it completely. Just sit down and "strum" against your leg, in time to a metronome. Believe it or not, it worked!

Yep - that's a good one. Try drumming on the table too with the radio on. Metronomes are pretty boring by themselves

Best,

A :-)

metronomes are boring, and beeping drives me insane. thank god i naturally have ggod timing. i think drum machines are pretty cool, but i dont know if you wanna spend a lot of money on one.

i think drum machines are pretty cool, but i dont know if you wanna spend a lot of money on one.

How about a cheap keyboard.
Most of 'em have a handful of rhythms built in. Adjust the tempo, and you're good to go.

I bought one for $2 at a yard sale a few years ago. My kids (3 and 6) love to just put on some of the stranger rhythms (complete with odd sounds) and dance around.

It also has a straight 4/4 drum rhythm, which is easier to listen to than a boring old click-click-click.

I found a free drum machine online; it was a Shockwave plug-in. I was looking for online metronomes. I've lost the URL, but a Google search should turn it up: it's called "wimpy beat box".It's more interesting than a metronome.

Wimpy Beat Box

*edit* Having just played with it for a bit, I've remembered why I haven't built one with flash (I did some tinkering along those lines once). It's not very even at all, which is really quite self-defeating. It's a problem with the way flash is built to stream content, IIRC. I'm sure there's a way around it somehow, but I didn't find it and the author of this one hasn't either.

This one also won't play the same sound again until the previous one has finished (for long sounds like the hi-hit this is a pain) and all the track volumes affect the overall volume rather than the track.

It's not without its uses, but rhythm training shouldn't be one of them when it keeps an uneven rhythm.

Hi mate

In the beginnning I had you same problems but that problems started to solve when I realized that every thing is rhythm and rhythm is in everything so whne you have to deal with rhythms there are two things to remember:

a) you can not play a rhythm until you know how it should sound, so first thing to do is to train your ear to the sound of a rhythm (that's where a tutorial cd comes in very handy). This helps in two ways: first it tells you if you're playing a rhythm correctly, secondarily it helps you recognize rhyhtms in the songs;
b) you can not play a rhyhtm until you pratice it a lot but there a lot of ways to pratice it. Actually you can pratice a rhythms in several ways, not even touching your guitar so metronomes or tutorial cds are not the only tools.

I mean you could learn to play rhythms with your hands playig beats 1 and 3 with your left and beats 2 and 4 with your right one. If the rhythm is

D/du/D/du

count 1 loud and just tap your left hand with a long tap (beat 1), then count loud 2 and tap twice your right with two shorter taps (beat 2) and repeat it again and again. After a while you will get a sound similar to a percussive instrument's one

Sometimes I also train rhythms just walking and syncronicing my voice with my steps: say "ta" each time you make a step with your left foot and "ta-ta" each time you walk with your right one and so on

Once you've internalized a few rhythms in your mind it is the time to play them with guitar, the first times muting the strings in order to concentrate yourself on the sound of the rhythm. Just remember that playing rhythms steadily is just a matter of correctly sincronizing your movements!

If you do so I guess that in a short time you will be able to play at least the most common straight rhythms like the one I suggested in my example

Cheers

Matteo

that wimpy beat box is pretty cool.

I'm glad you guys could find it, BC I couldn't find the link again! Good thing I installed it. You do get what you pay for.