Rhythm Foundations: Finding Your Groove

Beginners · 3 lessons · Six weeks

The strumming hand is the engine: time signatures, downstrokes and upstrokes, and the muting that turns a plain accompaniment into a real groove.

Feeling the beat

1. Your Internal Clock: Counting in 4/4 Time

   Why your foot starts tapping on its own, what the numbers in a time signature actually mean, and how to practice with a metronome without coming to hate it.

   What you'll learn

   • Understand what pulse, beat and bar are, and how they add up to a time signature.
   • Recognize 4/4 by ear and count it out loud.
   • Read a tempo as a number, and choose a sensible practice tempo.
   • Play for two minutes straight with a metronome without speeding up and without stopping on a mistake.

Syncopation and groove

1. Adding Some Spice: Downstrokes and Upstrokes

   Your hand is already traveling up and down all the time. The only thing left to decide is when it touches the strings — and that is where groove is born.

   What you'll learn

   • Produce a continuous pendulum motion that does not stop between the contacts.
   • Count eighth notes and know which hand direction belongs to each half.
   • Play a full one-bar strumming pattern at a steady tempo.
   • Explain what syncopation is and why it creates groove.
   • Play A minor and change to it from E minor.

Advanced right-hand technique

1. The Magic of Silence: Palm Muting and the Chuck

   The silence between the notes is half of the rhythm. Two muting techniques, where each of them belongs, and how they turn an accompaniment into drums.

   What you'll learn

   • Tell a chuck apart from a palm mute, by ear and in your hands.
   • Produce a clean chuck by releasing the pressure, without lifting your fingers off the strings.
   • Control how deep the palm mute is according to where your palm sits.
   • Place a chuck on beats two and four and keep the rhythm steady.
   • Change chords during the chuck on beat four.

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