Working on guitar rhythm

[Neehan]

Most jazz guitar books concentrate on note choices and scales and what not. When I record myself playing, the notes are fine but the rhythmic material is lacking.

Can you offer me some advice on books, videos, lessons, or anything to help with my rhythmic vocabulary?

Thanks in advance.

[Cunamara]

There is (among others) a very nice Emily Remler video on YouTube where she talks about this. She spent a lot of time with a metronome on 2 & 4 just getting the swing feel into her bones.

Learn to subdivide and to play on the beats and the off-beats (but very judiciously when comping or people will think you're off the beat):

Quarters:
1 2 3 4

Learn to accent the 1 & 3, the 2 & 4, the 4 & 1, the 2, the 3, etc.


Eighths:
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

Learn to accent the various "ands" in addition to the quarters.


Triplets:
1 & uh 2 & uh 3 & uh 4 & uh

Make those even and consistent when learning to count them- this is the fundamental feel of swing. Learn to accent each part of the triplet sub-count.


Sixteenths:
1 e & uh 2 e & uh 3 e & uh 4 e & uh

Like the rest of of them above, learn to accent any of the partial beats. Eventually you will find patterns of accents that you like. This sort of practice will decrease one's tendency to rush (which I still hear myself doing a lot) and can make a line of 8th notes sound rhythmically interesting even though they are actually very even.

Another piece of advice is to scat your lines with your playing. I find this changes up my rhythmic expression and leads automatically to playing with more variety and interest. The nice thing about this is that you can practice scatting lines without a guitar in hand, so you can practice jazz anywhere and improve your groove. Sort of a (these don't line up right because friggin' HTML won't render more than two spaces without resorting to coding them in, but you should get the idea):

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Boot ba dee-dum bop! bop!

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Boot ba doo-bee bop bop bop dweet! ba

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

do bee ba dee de-- dah-- dum bah-aaah diddly diddly be-bop!


Where otherwise I might fall into "do bee bah dee do bee bah dee do be bah dee" for bar after bar after bar. A lot of jazz guitarists fall into this and few can sound interesting playing this way. It becomes tedious quickly except in the hands of someone like Pat Martino who can play like that for choruses and be spellbinding. Sometimes I will borrow the rhythm feel of a melody while playing different notes.

Listen to drummers and count them carefully. You will hear different styles- some drummers play the triplet feel, some play an 8ths feel, some play a 16ths feel. Drummers tend to constantly subdivide the beat no matter what tempo they are playing. There is a video on YouTube of a recording of a Pat Metheny lesson in which he talks about how he feels the triplet beat in his body, even if he couldn't count it out loud or sing it at fast tempos.

I first noticed this- oddly enough- when I was listening to the Grateful Dead a lot, early in my guitar studies in college. Weir would drop accents between the beats (listen to Tennessee Jed for the song I first noticed him do this) and do so in a consistent pattern on the heads. Garcia would accent different partials of the beat in his lines for different effects. Once I noticed it there, I started hearing this sort of thing throughout jazz with greater sophistication. Charlie Parker does it and is worth studying for his sense of rhythm as much or more than his notes (notice how he plays fast bebop lines and they always swing, whereas many musicians play fast lines and the swing feel disappears).

Now if only I could do this stuff...

[marcwhy]

Jerry Bergonzi's book on rhythm; Mick Goodrick's rhythm book.

[RyanM]

Hal Galper's book Forward Motion;
Mike Longo's DVD's The Rhythmic Nature of Jazz.
Look them up on YouTube.

[Stanford J17]

I haven't (yet) purchased any of his masterclasses but they all sound quite interesting. Here is the one on rhythm:

Rhythm Workshop | Lesson by Tom Lippincott | Mike's Master Classes

Also check out his homepage. There is some very interesting stuff!

PS: If you purchase the masterclass, please let me know how you liked it.

[smokinguit]

The above advices are great. But if you really want to get rhythm in your bones: Transcribe and play along with the master. When I say transcibe I mean write it down, read what you have written down, and play it. And don't forget to use a metronome as much as possible.

[mr. beaumont]

I'm surprised we can give advice--the OP is so vague...

What do you mean "lacking?" Variation? Doesn't swing? Bad time feel?

[coolvinny]

Transcribing will give you interesting rhythmic ideas, which is I think what you are looking for.

[Patrick2]

To me, rhythmic playing and phraseology are pretty much synonymous. It's easy to develop rhythmic playing if you can focus on getting away from exclusively or almost exclusively playing eighth notes. Mix in some dotted notes, half notes, triplets . . tie notes to the following measure, etc.. It's impossible to not be rhythmic if you alter the value of each note you play.

[mjgp3]

Cunamara's scatting suggestion made me think of my own struggles with some lame, non-swinging rhythmic playing...

I find I can snap on 2 and 4 and scat a good, swinging solo (forget that my voice is no good, but you get the idea) no problem... I just can't play the same solo on guitar. When you're singing, you don't really have to think about notes, they're just there and you can focus cool rhythms. When translating to guitar, now I'm trying to follow chord changes and the whole process of selecting notes is a real hang up on playing and feeling cool rhythms the way I can when I scat.

If this doesn't resonate with you, then that's great, I envy you, but for me, my rhythmic struggles are really a symptom of not having a mastery of harmony... so I'm working on getting that part automatic, then I can play like I scat, hopefully... just thought I'd mention this type of thinking...

[eddy b.]

My two cents for developing rhythmic vocabulary is listening to and transcribing Bird his rhythmic vocabulary pretty much is the foundation of the modern jazz language. And so the drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach listen to them. A good excercise for Time Awareness is to put metronome on 40 bpm and with each click being 2 and 4 play any tune you know at this tempo. After this is easy try making the click be just beat 1...play any tune you know at this tempo. After this is easy make the click be beat 1 of a two measure phrase. Good time is the ability to deal with the space in between clicks of the metronome so the more space you can allow in between clicks the more solid your time. awareness.

[GuitOp81]

I read many excellent practical advices in this thread, a lot to work on, and I was already drawn to this topic by the other thread about Mick Goodrick's books. However, on the less immediately practical side, one thing sadly neglected way too often is how rhythm is closely related to speaking and dancing.
Some of the richest percussion traditions in the world teach rhythm literally as speeches, so every line is just a sentence. It is also a convenient way to memorize long and complex sequences. If you see how the lead soloist of the group in many traditions supports the dancer, by giving accents, leading tension and resolution, exchanging "phrases", that also should help clarifying the question of the rhythm in improvisation. I wonder how to translate this into a practice routine.
Of course there is a lot of music that reach a level of abstraction where the notion of rhythm itself becomes very vague, but I suppose that is just a degree of freedom that everyone has and it ends up being a matter of personal taste.

[Neehan]

Thanks for all the great suggestion and advice. I wanted to reply sooner but I only have internet access a couple days a week (doing the cruise ship guitarist thing).

I do notice my rhythms are hipper on tunes I've really mastered, like the blues. I apologize if my post was too vague but I was looking for general type suggestions. Some things I notice when listening to my own playing is lack of swing. Also, a lot of times I will end a phrase with two quarter notes in beats one and two. Often, I begin phrases on beat one and play steady eighth notes ending the phrase on the and of four or with two quarters like I said before.

I've started working on playing short four note lines moving around where the phrase starts. For example, play one chorus as 1 & 2 &, the next chorus play & 2 & 3.

Thanks again, I looking forward to digging into some of your ideas.

[Stanford J17]

There is nothing wrong with playing quarter notes.

Listen to Miles

His solo on Autumn Leaves ("Something Else" from Cannonball Adderley) starts with three quarter notes and a half note on the 9th of the chord.

or his famous solo on Someday My Prince Will Come. In the last chorus he even plays dotted half notes on beat one.

In fact his solos are full of quarter notes. He just seemed to know how to play them with "swing" (if that's possible;-)

[Patrick2]

There is nothing wrong with playing quarter notes.

Listen to Miles

His solo on Autumn Leaves ("Something Else" from Cannonball Adderley) starts with three quarter notes and a half note on the 9th of the chord.

or his famous solo on Someday My Prince Will Come. In the last chorus he even plays dotted half notes on beat one.

In fact his solos are full of quarter notes. He just seemed to know how to play them with "swing" (if that's possible;-)

I agree . . . nothing at all wrong with playing quarter notes . . or eighth notes for that matter. I just don't think you can be stringing together 16 measures [consisting exclusively] of either and then question why your improv isn't ryhthmic or doesn't swing. I'd need someone with a greater grasp on the matter than I have to help me understand how to make an improv swing without changing up the values of the notes within it.

I'll reference players like Martino and McGlaughlin with a preface that this is not intended as a disparaging comment . . . . but I'll point out that *sometimes* their excessive runs consisting exclusively of notes with similar time values doesn't swing and isn't at all rhythmic . . . *to me*. It often sounds like it is to others, because the rhythm section behind them is definitely swinging rhythmically. But, if you were to go into a studio during the mix down of such a recording . . and drop all of the faders except the guitar down to zero . . and then just hear the guitar . .. would it be swinging or rhythmic?

Take, for example, a straight 4 quarter notes to the bar big band guitar strumming. It's called "rhythm guitar" . . but, how rhythmic could it actually be?

There have been suggestion here in this thread of setting a metronome to hit on the 2s and 4s. That's a great and very fundamental way of counting off a swinging cadence. However, my contention is that it wouldn't matter in the least where the metronome hits if you're going to lay down eighth notes exclusively for the next 16 or so measures.

I'd be open to and actually welcome any feelings to the contrary. Maybe I'm missing something here?

[dingusmingus]

Note length and volume/dynamics are also part of swing and rhythmic feel. I think four to the bar comping can swing very hard.

[MarketTomato]

Hey all, first post here (been browsing the forum for the last couple years but never said anything), but I thought I'd chime in with a little bit of advice.

As far as metronome on the 2 and 4 goes, I'd say it's still important even when you're playing constant eighth notes merely for the fact of feeling where the accents are in swing. Try accenting all of your up strokes in strict alternate picking (constant 8ths) at slower tempos.

Pick rhythms (phrasing) that you have trouble playing or wouldn't regularly use in your solos, and run that rhythm strictly through a tune or set of changes you know. Don't waver from it, and limit yourself to that rhythm. Use short phrases, longer phrases, etc. Be creative about building your own exercises and practicing rhythms that you can't pull off at regular tempos. (I.E., play a chorus where you only start phrases on the + of 2) The idea is to ingrain unfamiliar phrasing into your playing to the point where you don't have to think about it and it becomes a lyrical intuitiveness.

Bearing all this in mind, try and get a two-for-one deal out of it and practice these rhythms while running triad patterns, scale patterns, arpeggios, either through a tune or through a specific key or position.

Have fun with it and take it meditatively slow!

[Reg]

Most good rhythmic players have gone through a few syncopated studies designed to develop accuracy and speed when playing or sight reading.

The standards have been... Louis Bellson's... Modern Reading Text in 4/4 and Odd Time Reading Text, both cheap and can be bought used even for less.

[christianm77]

All good suggestions....

Rhythm is an area as vast as anything else in music. It's not as simple (I've found) as 'working on your rhythm.' What actually happens is you become aware of and interested in rhythms. In doing this your time and rhythmic sensibility will improve, but you will always find more stuff to work on.

If you take a solo by Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery or Louis Armstrong (just to pick three names) you will find that the rhythms are in themselves a whole piece of music. They play almost like drummers. The jazz language in a very real sense is rhythm above everything else - how else would Max Roach be able to play bebop?

Try transcribing (either purely orally, or writing them down) just the rhythms of a solo. That's a good exercise!

My main advice is - don't get stuck. Don't (as I did) just practice one thing for years - instead try different exercises and ideas and see what works for you. Recently I've enjoyed working on the Mike Longo stuff a huge amount, but it wouldn't surprise me if something else comes along in 6 months and I get hooked on that.

[christianm77]

Oh I forgot - play with musicians who are interested in rhythm and will kick your ass! I had a good moment today - playing a quaver too early in Tutu by Miles Davis. Bass player called me out on it - so I learned something :-)

[MarkRhodes]

There is (among others) a very nice Emily Remler video on YouTube where she talks about this. She spent a lot of time with a metronome on 2 & 4 just getting the swing feel into her bones.

I watched that today. It's from Emily's "Bebop and Swing Guitar", a videotape put out by Hot Licks some years ago. It's a very good hour of instruction that focuses intently on rhythm. And she is right: if you can't make it swing, you got nothing. But you can learn to swing. Do what you gotta do. She talks about making five-minute tapes of changes for tunes she was working on and playing them over and over, working out ideas, making sure her timing was right. She was insistent about using the metronome to sound beats 2 and 4. She said a teacher told her she had bad time. She had already graduated from Berklee! She said she cried but then she got out the metronome. It really does make all the difference. A simple thing that swings always works.

[2bornot2bop]

I began working on rhythm one day...then one day I noticed the rhythm was working on me

[Finn]

"Take, for example, a straight 4 quarter notes to the bar big band guitar strumming. It's called "rhythm guitar" . . but, how rhythmic could it actually be?"

Listen to an album called Rhythm Willie by Herb Ellis and Freddie Green, Green is playing rhythm 4 to the bar and if that doesn't swing then nothing does IMO.

[mercosound]

Someone else mentioned Emily Remler's take on playing a swinging solo; here's the link:

I always enjoy listening to Emily's lessons/playing; damn shame she's no longer with us...

Don

[MarkRhodes]

Listen to an album called Rhythm Willie by Herb Ellis and Freddie Green, Green is playing rhythm 4 to the bar and if that doesn't swing then nothing does IMO.

Here's a cut from the "Rhythm Willie" album---swings like mad.