Exploring Rhythmic Variations in Music

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 the Right Hand

Intentionally, when examining the chord tones, we've kept the right hand really simple because we want to focus on finding the good notes.

• Why? 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; it allows me to concentrate on my left hand.

When you're new to this, there's a lot to think about:

• "Right, okay, I want to play the third of this chord. What is it? Where is it?"

It's overwhelming enough without having to worry about rhythm at the same time.

Restricting the Left Hand

Let's try now restricting the left hand a little more. We're not going to move around anywhere near as much.

• We're still going to take the three chord tones, but in a limited area.
• This time, we can start to focus more on the right hand.

Rhythmic Ideas

Here are some different rhythms that you could explore:

• If you have a friend who plays, they might lay down a rhythmic strum pattern instead of just a single chord.
• Maybe your teacher can help, or if you have a loop pedal, you can pop down some simple strum patterns.

We'll start with a simple strum pattern on a G chord and then mess around with some rhythmic ideas using only three notes.

Remember:

• Our three chord tones over G are G, B.
• Start off really basic with just three instances of those chord tones.

As you may get bored hearing those particular tones, try these:

• Move down to some lower tones.
• Then move up to some higher tones.

Experimenting with Rhythms

Try to avoid moving around too much within one particular instance. Instead, experiment with varying the rhythmic divisions you're playing:

• Quarter notes
• Eighth notes
• Sixteenth notes
• Triplets

You have loads of options to experiment with!

Simplify and Experiment

Developing your rhythmic play can be done effectively by restricting your left hand. You don't want to be thinking about coming up with cool rhythms while also worrying about what notes to play.

• Simplify one hand, experiment with the other.
• Then, simplify the other hand, experiment with the first.
• Finally, put it all together and see how you get on.

Next Steps

The next step will be applying these rhythms to a natural chord progression where we change the chords underneath instead of sticking to a single chord.

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