The ULTIMATE Rhythm Guitar Video - Understanding Rhythm For Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this video, we're going to go over the difference between quarter note, eighth note, and 16th notes. What's the difference? How do you play them? We're going to find that out here in this lesson video.

So when we talk about quarter notes, eighth notes, and 16th notes, we're most of the time talking about rhythm. All right? And that's our strumming. Down, up, down, up. And if you're interested more about subdivisions and time signatures, I'll put a video up here or a link to a video up here. You can go check that out and learn more about that. So most students start off with quarter note rhythms, and that's going to be all down strum. So it'll sound like this.

1, 2, 3, 4.

This is what we call quarter notes. So think of a dollar bill. You have four quarters and a dollar bill. So there's basically four down strums, and we call this the downbeat. And that's a great way to remember down strums on the downbeat. So quarter notes, again, would be 1, 2, 3, 4. Where do 8th notes fit into the scheme of things? Well, the. The eighth notes is what we call the upbeat, the up strum. So downbeat, down strum, up, beat up strum. They fit in between the quarter notes. So if I play the quarter notes, 1, 2, 3, 4, I'm gonna put eighth notes in between, and I'm gonna count those eighth notes with an. And it's gonna sound like this.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

And 1, 2, 3, 4.

1 and 2 and 3 and four.

And 1, 2 and 3, four.

Again, 1 and 2 and 3 and.

4, and 1, 2, 3, four. So you can see and you can hear that my quarter note tempo is not changing. It sounds like I'm going faster because I have a lot more notes in the same amount of time. So that's why eighth notes feel like they're going faster. But the. The overall tempo is still the same because I didn't change my quarter notes. So just so you can hear one more time, quarter notes, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Eighth notes, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

All right, so you can hear there's just more strums within the same time frame. Hey, guys, real quick. I hope you're enjoying this lesson video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel to this way you'll be able to see when I release more videos just like this. Thanks so much. Let's get into 16th notes. So if you think 8th notes are fast. 16th notes are even faster. So 16th notes are a subdivision of 8th notes. So we kind of have quarter notes on the top. And then every quarter note has two eighth notes. Every eighth note has two sixteenth notes. So one quarter note equals four sixteenth notes. A little bit of a math problem here, but let's talk about counting this. So quarter notes, we said we counted 1, 2, 3, 4 eighth notes.

We count 1 and 2 and 3.

And 4 and 16th notes, we're gonna count 1 E and A, 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A. Now, the 16th notes go in between the eighth notes. So this is going to sound even quicker. So let's again start with quarter notes. We're going to keep the same tempo. Here we go. So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4 quarters. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2. Switch to eighth notes.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2. And here's sixteenths.

Ready?

1E and A. 2E and A 3E and A 4E and A 1E and A 2E and A 3E and a 4E and A.

Now, an interesting thing happens on sixteenth notes. So we said on quarter notes, the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 were the downbeat and the ands were the upbeat. Well, on 16th note strumming patterns, the 1 and the and become the downbeats.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

And the E and the U become the upbeat for 16th note patterns. So let's do this one more time here, okay? Starting with quarter notes, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 8th notes. Here we go.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 16th notes. Here we go. One E and A two E and A three E and A four E and A one E and A two E and A 3E and A four E and A.

So you can see. And I mean, I'm going fairly slow. If you went for a faster tempo, your hand would have to be really loose to do some of these 16th note patterns. So if I went just a little bit faster for you guys to hear, we had 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, and.

I think I might even went faster. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and a 2e and a 3 and a 4e and a 1e and a 2e and a 3 &a.

Now, if I were going to play something like that, I mean, think of. Think of bands like a band like Mumford and Sons. They strum stuff like that really fast. This pick is Probably a little bit too thick for me to do. I almost felt like the pick was going to fall out of my hand. Sometimes with a lot of strumming like that, you might want to go with a lighter pick. Actually have a really cool video put up here about different type of picks that you can use. Whether you're playing acoustic, electric. If you want to go check that out, you can go check that out too, but that's something to keep in mind when you're strumming. You might want to use a different pick if you got to be really fast and really aggressive. But that is the overall timing of quarter notes, 8th notes and 16th notes, and where they fit in in your strumming and your rhythm. If you're looking to learn a lot more about rhythm playing, I do have an online guitar course that you can go check out where I talk about different types of eighth notes and 16 keynote strumming patterns. I even talk about like palm muting and accented rhythms. Lots of cool stuff in there. If you guys want to go check that out, I'll put a link in the description below for you guys to go find that. Thanks for watching this video guys. I hope you found a lot of value from it. If there's something that you have questions on, put a comment below this video. I'd love to try and make a video for you to answer your questions. YouTube's gonna pop a couple more videos up over here. Go check those out. And a quick reminder, don't forget to subscribe and like the video. Subscribing will show you more videos just like this. So I'll see you guys hopefully in another lesson video.