Can you improve rhythm

This is something that should come naturally. Our own hearts give us a constant beat. When you walk, you walk with a steady beat. Finding a connection to this natural sense of beat is essential as a foundation for good rhythm.

Before we go on, I should clarify beat and rhythm. Beat is the recurring, steady pulse in music. Rhythms are patterns of shorter and longer notes that occur over a beat.

As I play and they drum, they experience the music in a new way—they hear it expressed rhythmically in relationship to a steady beat which they can feel because they are moving their own body to create the beat. Once the student can successfully keep the beat while I play, we trade back.

They play and I drum the beat. I stand where they can see and hear me. Seeing the motion of my hand on the drum helps them anticipate the beat. Like magic, this simple activity will usually transform a rhythmically challenged performance into one with accurate rhythms played over a steady beat. This is the idea that music should be learned through all of the senses, including your kinesthetic physical awareness. The following video reveals a fascinating class in which eurhythmics is demonstrated.

Notice that the students are creating movements that match rhythms. This is the fundamental idea. Find a recording of your favorite song, and clap your hands together with each count as you listen to it. You can also tap your leg, your guitar or piano, or a table. When you feel comfortable, add counting. Most songs have the feeling of three or four beats in each measure. Try both and see which one fits. Remember, if it sounds like a waltz, then it probably has three beats per measure, but if it sounds like a march, then it probably has four beats per measure.

Check out a video that demonstrates this exercise here. Learning how to subdivide is the basis of establishing that internal sense of rhythm, and later, just figuring out tough rhythms! Subdivision is the practice of dividing the beats of a song into shorter beats. The following video visually details this rhythm exercise, but Dan also does a great job explaining it aurally.

Find a friend, a neighbor, a band, or a great teacher with TakeLessons whose sense of rhythm and timing you really admire, and then find time to play with them. Now, take that song that you recorded before, set the metronome to a slow, steady beat again, and play along. Watch this video where the metronome is demonstrated on the piano. Being just a hair behind or ahead of the beat pulls the listener in, and frankly, keeps us from sounding like robots, or some computer program that makes music.

The right kind of practice. Whatever you want to be great at, all research shows that you must lock into a routine and continually practice. Choosing to practice it deliberately is the first step. A musician can still impress others and themselves without truly mastering rhythm. The truth is that becoming a better musician has less to do with clock timing, less with memorization of pieces and scales, and much more to do with brute-force development of natural-sounding rhythm.

Learning how to improvise over different beats and music will help build your rhythm fast. Metronome clicks are boring and can create tension. They will tire you out way sooner than practicing to a beat or groove. To log the amount of practice hours you really need to master your instrument, make sure to vary the click sound before it slowly drives you nuts, or better yet…. Playing to a metronome is essential for building internal time, but — how do you develop natural feel?

As Jazz Legend Chick Corea says, apprenticeship is the ultimate key to building rhythm and timing. Use a drummer or groove machine as your mentor and mimic their feel for faster improvement. As in any trade, awareness comes from experience. Best part is — once you build these motor skills, you never lose them!