Hello all,
I'd be very grateful if anyone could offer help with my complete lack of sense of beat or rhythm. Here's my story:
I'm a middle aged bloke and I'm not a total beginner, in fact I've been having private tuition (1 hour every 2 weeks) for longer than I care to remember. I'll admit that with a family and work I never do the practice I should do between lessons, and the practice I do isn't of sufficient quality - but I do some practice.
My huge problem is my lack of sense of beat or rhythm, so much so that half way through this weeks lesson I was tempted to call it quits. If my tutor were to ask me to be able to play the shapes of the A minor pentatonic at 90 bpm for the next lesson, then that wouldn't be too much of an issue, but I've lost count of the amount of songs I've started to learn at lessons and never got past the first couple of bars because I just don't 'get' the rhythm - I even find it hugely difficult to listen to a song I'm learning from a CD and repeat it or play along to it in terms of rhythm.
For the last few lessons my tutor has gone back to basics - for example giving me some chords (perhaps A C D G) and asking me to play the chords to the rhythm of my choice, all I can ever think of is strumming chords at different speeds - quick quick slow quick. He will then play the chords to a rhythm that sounds great, and ask me to copy it - without fail I never can.
When my tutor tries to teach me a new song, the metronome is just a 'noise' to me. I can never tune in to it, and when he tells me one note is on the beat and the next is just before or after the beat then that's simply impossible for me to do. He's even tried creating some drum tracks on his computer, playing them back and asking me to clap to the beat - I can never feel the beat, all I can do is clap to every drum sound.
I'm really down about this at the moment, I don't blame my tutor as I'm convinced he simply hasn't come across anyone else with my 'issues'.
Really appreciate it if anyone could give me some ideas how to improve my sense of rhythm.
I have a student who doesn't find it easy to work out the strumming patterns in songs.
What I do is simplify it and write out one bar on a single line so that she can see "this is a one beat sound, this is two half-beat sounds" and so on. We'll clap the rhythm a few times, then clap along to the song on CD and then pick up the guitars.
Facing each other with guitars in hand and that first chord in place I'll play the rhythm we've just clapped. My student watches my strumming hand and starts to work her own strumming hand to match mine. This means that for maybe 20 iterations of the strum pattern she is just moving her hands and making no sound.
Then she hits the strings. It might not be perfect the first dozen bars or so but she'll normally arrive in the ball park so we can try a verse of the song. Sometimes it falls apart as we try to sync it with the vocals so we go back to watching hands and picking it up from there.
At no time to do I suggest she create her own rhythms or suggest any speed. It means we sang REM's "Losing My Religion" at about half speed a few weeks back but all of a sudden she dropped in the chorus riff bang on time.
Try it with your teacher.
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk
