Guitar/Rhythm
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Good rhythm is almost essential to good guitar, and probably the simplest to understand. Let's start with some terms:
- Beat
- Measure
- Time signature
All measures consist of a number of beats. You see the beats with the time signature, for example, 4/4. However, 4/4 is known as common time, and has special notation.
4/4 means that there are four beats in the measure, and that a whole note consists of four beats. Here are the other notes:
- whole note
- half note
- quarter note
- eigth note
- sixteenth note
and so on.
A whole note consists of four quarter notes or four beats since the quarter note gets the beat in this case. Each half note is two beats, quarter note is one beat, etc. There are other possible signatures, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 7/4 are the common ones.
To apply what we have read, let's pull out the most basic of progressions, where we will play G and D in alternate measures, with a 4/4 time signature.
It will look like this(each measure separated by a pipe and each beat denoted with a dash):
G D |- - - - |- - - -| v v v v v v v v
The "v" from now on denotes a downstroke and a "^" denotes an upstroke. Here. you are playing a downstroke on each beat (each tick of the metronome) and nothing in between. Some people find it easier to practice this without playing any chord, and muting all the strings. Try that too.
Let's do some upstrokes now.
G D |- - - - |- - - - | v^v^v^v^ v^v^v^v^
Here, you are downstroking on the tick (intuitively called the 'downbeat') and upstroking in between the ticks ( the upbeat. A good way to do this is to count your beats, "one-and two and three and four" going down on the numbers and up on the ands. Most strumming patterns you can here this going on, but slightly more complicated. Make sure you are going down on downbeats and up on upbeats. A lot of people who start playing tend to not follow this, and it mixes up your rhythm badly. If you keep to this pattern, even with more complicated patterns, you will not lose track of the beat.
If you listen to the above pattern, it will start to sound boring. But it is the basis of all other patterns. When you hear a more complicated pattern, most likely the player is missing some strums. Like this:
G D |- - - - |- - - - | v^v^v^v^ v^v^v^v^
