Electric Guitar: Improving Your Sense of Rhythm

Having good timing and a strong sense of rhythm is invaluable if you want to become an expert guitar player. Some people are born with excellent innate senses of rhythm while other people are not. Here is an experiment you can perform if you like: find a person with good rhythm and play them a bluesy groove and see if they immediately start moving their hips and swaying to the rhythm of the music; then play the same song for a person with no innate sense of rhythm and see if they just stand there, totally lifeless, with a perplexed look on their face. If you ask the person with no rhythm to start dancing to the song, they might sling their arms and legs around in a herky-jerky fashion, which might remind you of a person falling down a well or someone having a seizure. I am not making fun of these people. It is just the difference between having a natural sense of rhythm and not having one.

Personally, I was born with a fairly decent sense of rhythm, while my father was not. He simply cannot feel where the beat should be in songs. I don't know the reason beind it, but it isn't his fault. He has learned to play the guitar moderately well but quite robotically over the years even though he has no natural sense of rhythm, so there is a little hope for others. At first my father would play riffs and songs totally out of time, but now he has improved his rhythm considerably, although you can still tell he does not have a natural feel for where the beat should be. Again, this means there is hope for other players born without a natural sense of timing.

Don't get discouraged if your body wasn't blessed with a natural feel for rhythm, don't smash your guitar against your refrigerator if someone says you are playing out of time, because I have a few ideas that may be able to help you. I'm not quite sure how many of them will actually work since they have never been tested before. But I feel the suggestions below must have some value since they each involve working with rhythm in some way and involve large amounts of common sense. I have never read about any tried-and-true methods that definitely enhance one's sense of time. If I would have, I would've listed them here. Nevertheless, here are a few suggestions:

1. Buy a metronome.

2. When practicing a song or various riffs, always use your metronome and make a conscious effort to play in time with the beat while asking yourself if you're playing with the proper rhythm.

3. Jam along to as many CDs as you can, always trying to feel the beat with the drummer while staying in exact synchronization with the guitars.

4. Learn how to play the drums. If you can't afford to purchase an entire set, you could buy some of those small electronic practice pads, or make your own crude drum set from cardboard boxes or other items around your house.

5. Take dance lessons from a top-level instructor. (I am not joking here. Although I have never tried it, it doesn't seem like a bad idea.) Ask the instructor to explain the concept of rhythm to you, ask them how you can improve your own natural sense of timing. They may have the perfect answer for you.

To reiterate, a couple of the methods above are untested, but even if you try them and they are not supremely effective, I am sure none of them would make your sense of rhythm any worse.

I hope a few of the ideas above help.