Music Lesson on Rhythm and Articulation

Hi, I'm Bruce Gertz.

Understanding Our Natural Rhythm

First off, we all have a pulse, which I believe is our own natural rhythm. Anytime we play rhythms or grooves, we should try to relate those to our pulse. This makes it more comfortable to play.

• If it's too fast, cut it in half.
• If it's too slow, double it up.

I'll explain this in a minute.

The Comfort Zone of Pulse

As I was saying about the natural time in our pulse, I think when we're relaxed, our pulse tends to be in the area of 72 beats a minute. When we're excited or exercising, however, our pulse can escalate to the high one hundreds or even the low two hundreds.

Generally, when we play music, we want to be fairly relaxed, but we can be excited too. I would say the most comfortable zone to feel the time would be somewhere between 72 and 120 beats per minute.

• If you play anything really fast, like 240, simply feel it in two at 120.

Tuning into External Time Sources

Here, I have a simple metronome. This is a good device for hearing a pulse outside of ourselves. Although we have this pulse inside, we don't always feel the time outside our bodies.

It's good to tune into an external time source such as:

• A metronome
• A drum machine
• Play-along CDs with drum tracks

I'll be using some of these to demonstrate swing time and straight time, as well as different interpretations in between.

First Exercise: Getting Accurate Time

Here's 120 beats per minute.

See? It feels pretty natural.

Establishing the Rhythm

Now, the first exercise I want to show you is how to get your time accurate.

1. Listen to the time and start to feel the rhythm:
   1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

2. Now that I'm feeling that rhythm, I'm going to just play a note and try to lock it in with that rhythm:
   One, two, three, four.

3. Now, instead of just one note, how about if I play the note E and the note G, two beats each, two E's, two G's:
   1, 2, 3, 4.

Changing Note Lengths

Notice I can change the length of these notes:

• Play them longer
• Play them full length

It has a certain sound timewise.

Now, listen to what happens when I put in some space and then less space.

• If I play the note short, it has a certain sound.
• If I play the note long, it has another sound.

Articulation

The way you play notes, long, short, hard attack, soft attack, these are known as articulation.

Other forms of articulation can include:

• Playing a note with the left hand and not with the right.

For instance, I might play the D on the A string and then play the E with my left hand and not with my right. It will sound like this:
1, 2, 3, 4.

I can go the other way too.

These are different forms of articulation. Some players even use pull-offs.

The important thing is that whatever you do, it has to be in the time to feel good.