Rhythm Guitar Lessons for BEGINNERS - How to Count Rhythm on Guitar

Now, while I don't really believe in needing to sight read music in terms of melody, I mean, I'm not the greatest sight reader myself, and I'm pretty good guitar player. I didn't go to music school, so I'm not the best sight reader. But I can sight read rhythm. I did a lot of that as a drummer. I had to. You really need to know how to read rhythm as a drummer. And like I said, it made me a much better guitar player. So in this first lesson, I want to go over kind of the very basic basics of rhythm. We're going to be going over three types of rhythm notation here. The notes are going to be a whole note, a half note, and a quarter note. And we're going to use these to start building our rhythm foundation. So let's start with the whole note. So the whole note looks like a big donut with a hole in it. And what it's. What it means is play something and count to four. So if you want to think, it's telling you how much time this space is taking up. So, for example, if I were to play an E minor chord for a whole note, I would strum and count to four.

1, 2, 3, 4.

And then I would play the next chord for four. 1, 2, 3,. I'm playing a C chord. Okay, so again, that would be a whole note.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four.

Back to E minor.

1, 2, 3,4. 1, 2, 3, Four.

And that's where I start students with a lot of rhythm, just because you need to understand just the count in the timing. And a lot of times we'll do this with the metronome. And that's what we're going to be doing in the second lesson, the video after this, we're going to be doing some application of what I'm teaching you in this lesson. So get ready for that in lesson number two here. But that is our whole note. And that's where I start most students with their strumming, just playing a chord, strumming it, counting to four, and switching chords. It also gives you time for those of you that don't have fast chord changes. A whole note gives you a lot of time to get your fingers over to the next chord before you have to strum again. But this is where I start all students whole note strumming. As students, you know, chord changes get better. The next thing I focus on is we do a half note. Now, a half note, if you think of fractions and halves, it is two beats. So there Would be two half notes for every whole note. So a whole note is four beats. Half note is two beats. So we need two half notes to make four beats. I know there is some math involved here. I'm sorry. I do love math. So what we would do now, if we went back to our E minor and C chords, you would do 1, 2, 1, 2. Okay. They're each taking up two beats.

1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,. 1, 2.

Now, ideally, we would still count out the measure as 4, but I just want to understand the timing that each one of these chords or each one of these notes is now two beats.

So we've got 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,. 1, 2.

All right, that's two chords splitting a measure. Now, if they were still a single measure, it would be E minor.

1, 2, 1, 2, C two. 1, 2, 1, two, 1, two, 1, 2, 1, 2.

So now we've got two strums in that four beat timing. Okay, so I'm going to do that again. E minor.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. 1, 2, 3, Four. 1, 2, 3,4.

All right, so that would be half note strumming. All right, so if you were doing a full measure of a chord. So a measure, just. If you guys don't know what a measure is, it's two horizontal brackets. Think of it as a dollar bill. Okay. And there's four quarters in a dollar bill. Well, each quarter represents a beat. Okay, so now we've got this measure which is four beats. The next type of timing we're going to talk about is a quarter note. And a quarter note is one beat each. So if we brought that over to our strumming our E minor chord, it would sound like this. 1, 2, 3, 4. Now, C chord.

1, 2, 3, four.

Back to E minor.

1, 2, 3, Four.

To C chord.

1, 2, three, four.

Now, if I were going to do a chord progression, let me just do like G, E minor, C, D, very common progression with quarter notes.

All right, one, two, three, four, switch. One, two, three, four, Switch. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Switch.

1. 1, 2, 3, four, switch.

So what I would do with my students is first we would just start with whole notes.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, Four. One, two, three, 4. One.

Then we would switch to half notes. Ready?

One, two, three, four. One, two, four, three, four. One, 2, 3, 4. One, two, 3.

Then quarter notes.

So that's how we would work through the foundations of the rhythm. And eventually what we would do is we would put that to a metronome. And that's what we're going to do in the next lesson is we're going to do some application with what we just learned in this lesson. So go back, review, make sure you understand the whole note, the half note and the quarter note. And you can click over here to go to the next lesson video where I'm going to show you some application and we're going to work on listening for chord changes.

Sam.