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Varying the Rhythm in Your Music Lessons

Alright then, guys!

Now that we've talked about some good tones to find over chords, what we're going to do now is look at varying the rhythm.

Focus on Chord Tones

Intentionally, when looking at the chord tones, we kept the right hand really simple because we want to focus on finding the good notes. We don't want to worry too much about when to play these notes.

• That's why I played everything on beat one pretty much, which means I can concentrate on my left hand.
• When you're new to this, it requires a lot of thinking, like, "Right, okay, I want to play the third of this chord. What is it? Where is it?"

There's a lot to think about, let alone worrying about what rhythm to play!

Restricting the Left Hand

Let's try restricting the left hand a little more.

• We're not going to move around nearly as much.
• We'll still take the three chord tones, but in a limited area.

This time, we can start to think more about the right hand and different rhythms we could come up with.

• If you've got a friend who plays, perhaps they can lay down more of a rhythmic strum pattern rather than just a single chord.
• Or maybe your teacher can help.
• Again, if you've got your loop pedal going, you can pop down a simple strum pattern on a G chord.

After that, we'll mess around with some rhythmic ideas, but just on three notes.

Exploring Rhythm

Remember: we're not going to be exploring the fretboard just yet. As you gain confidence, branch out and experiment, most importantly, have fun!

Here we go!

• Remember our three chord tones over G: G, B.

We started off really basic with just three instances of those chord tones.

• As I got a bit bored of hearing those particular tones, I moved down a little bit onto some lower tones, then moved up a bit onto some higher tones.
• However, try to avoid moving around too much within one particular instance, and instead just experiment with varying up the rhythmic divisions you're playing.

Rhythmic Divisions

You've got loads of options to mess with!

• Whether you're playing quarter notes,
• triplets,
• eighth notes,
• sixteenth notes, or even more.

Developing this skill can be done effectively by restricting what your left hand is doing.

Experiment and Simplify

You don't want to be worried about coming up with cool rhythms while thinking about what notes to play.

• Simplify one hand and experiment with the other.
• Then simplify the other hand and experiment again.

Finally, put it all together and see how you get on!

The next step will be to take it and apply it to a natural chord progression where we change the chords underneath rather than staying on a single chord.

Good luck with that! Let's check out some chord progressions!