Absolute Beginner Course (2 of 5) – Keeping the Rhythm

Learning to keep Rhythm (Lesson 2 of 5)

Welcome back to day 2 of our 5-day absolute beginner ukulele email course!
Today we’ll be working on the concept of rhythm and helping you get used to hearing and counting in 4/4 time. Rhythm is the backbone of all music. Without rhythm, it doesn’t matter if you know chords, strumming patterns, or how to pick, you won’t be able to play anything that could be identified by your friends as music.

Rhythm can be tricky

Some people have it naturally, while many others just can’t hear it at all. If you’re in the camp where you feel you have no rhythm, it’s totally ok, I didn’t either and from my experience it’s something that can be learned.

For today’s lesson, we actually won’t be using the ukulele at all, just the computer and our ears and by the end of the day, you’ll be able to count in time as well as hear the beat for most songs.

Let’s get started!

Although there are many rhythm signatures (ways of counting beats) out there, over 90% of all music you’ll encounter or want to play will be played in what’s known as 4/4 time.

4/4 time is a rhythm signature where there are 4 beats in every measure of music.

If you can count; 1, 2, 3, 4 , you’re counting in 4/4 time.

Go ahead and try to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…etc etc at whatever tempo feels natural to you.

Cool! You can already create a 4/4 rhythm!

Now let’s work on hearing 4/4 timing. Headphones may help for these exercises so if you have them, go ahead and plug them in now.

Ok, Here is a song lesson for one of Aldrine’s songs called ‘Ice cream’, that we taught on Ukulele Underground.

Now, there are a bunch of diagrams and lyrics and chords that are going to come up on the screen. Don’t pay attention to any of it. Just play the video, close your eyes and see if you can count out loud, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…. to the beat of the song. If you’re having trouble, listen closely to the drums. Each time you hear the snare drum (the drum that sounds like a ’thwock’), it’ll be on either the 2nd or the 4th beat. So once you hear the snare drum, ‘thwock’, say 2 and keep counting, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…

Got it? Great job!

Here’s another lesson we did for Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’.

This one should be more challenging for 2 reasons, it’s at a quicker tempo and also there is no drum to listen for. A trick for counting rhythm for songs without drums is to listen to the chord progression. While you will usually hear the drum beat on the 2nd or 4th beat of a song, in many songs, chord changes happen on beat 1 or beat 3.

In this song, every chord change comes on beat 1. So if you watch the video you can follow along with the lyrics and try to time your 1, 2, 3, 4 and get to 1 before the next chord lights up on the screen.

Ok, let’s give it a shot!

Let’s try to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4… in time with the song.

Got it? Great!

Didn’t get it? That’s ok. If you are brand new to music, this can be really tricky. Don’t get discouraged, here’s another tool you can use to help you practice hearing rhythm. It’s called a metronome.

A metronome is a little tool that beeps or clicks in rhythm at any speed (BPM) you set it to. All musicians (any good one anyway) use a metronome when recording music to make sure they are playing in time. In the past, you’d have to go out and buy one, but this is the future and good ole Google actually has one built into their search engine.

You can click this link
https://www.google.com/#q=online+metronome

or just type ‘online metronome’ into google and you’ll get this:

If you’re having trouble counting 1, 2, 3, 4.. with music, you can start off practicing counting beats with the metronome. You can drag the slider left and right to adjust the speed (BPM) and count along. You can practice with the metronome until you feel you can count along pretty well then you can try the songs above or any of your favorite songs to see if you can find the beat.

The BPM for Ice Cream is around 88 BPM and Brown Eyed girl is around 150 BPM so you can use the metronome to hear what those speeds sound like then try to listen to the songs again and try to count along with them.

Now for the most important part of today’s lesson.

The whole reason we spent time learning how to count beats is to set you up for this. Let’s learn something that you’ll be doing for the rest of your life whenever you play music;

Foot Tapping

Foot tapping is simply tapping your foot along to the beat of a song. It’s one of the best techniques to use to keep time while you are playing an instrument. It’s used by almost every single musician, whether professional or amateur. Go and watch your favorite musician play the guitar or ukulele, chances are they’ll be tapping their feet in some way.

Take a look at Jake’s foot here, even the best ukulele player in the world still taps his foot

Here’s how to do it.

In 4/4 time there are 2 common ways to tap your foot to the beat.
You tap your foot to every beat. so for 1 measure of 1, 2, 3 ,4 you would tap your foot 4 times.
If the beat is too fast for a foot tap on every beat, you tap instead of beat 1 and beat 3.

Try to tap your foot along to the first song ‘Ice Cream’, tapping once for every beat. So you’ll have 4 taps per measure.

Now tap your foot along to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, this time tapping your foot on just the first and 3rd beat.

If you were to do them back to back you would notice that although the BPM (speed of the rhythm) changed drastically, your foot tap speed changed only slightly! The important take away from this is you should be able to find a comfortable foot tapping speed to help you with the rhythm no matter how fast or slow a song is. And the cool thing is, this is up to you! Sometimes you’ll be playing a fast song and you’ll want to tap to every beat if it helps you keep time. The important thing is you get in the habit of tapping your foot to the beat in some way.

Foot tapping is essential to pretty much everything you’ll do with music so I really want you to start practicing this daily. The goal is to be able to tap your foot to the beat without having to count the beats out loud or in your head. Anytime you’re listening to music, in the car, at home, go ahead and try and tap your foot along to the beat. Get that practice in whenever you can. You want to get to the point where foot tapping is second nature and you can do it without even thinking. I can’t stress how much this is going help you once you start strumming.

That’s it for today! Great job. I know we didn’t use the ukulele today and you’re probably chomping at the bit to pick that thing up again so tomorrow, we’ll be working on strumming technique with your right hand.

See you then!
Ryan

Next Lesson – Learning to Strum