 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here with MGRmusic.com and today we're going to learn the theory of rhythm guitar. The amp I'm using for this video today is the Blackstar debut 15E. You're hearing the amp mic'd up with a Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone and I'm playing the amp on the clean channel. I'm plugged into the amp with this really cool vintage icon V59 telecaster style guitar. So for many new players, learning rhythm is very very important. So in this lesson we're going to break down the concept of what rhythm is and I'm going to show you guys five simple strumming patterns that you can use to start off playing rhythm and getting really tight up changing your chords. So before we actually start learning how to play rhythm, we need to learn the building blocks of rhythm. So we're first going to learn about rhythmic subdivisions. So let's imagine we're playing a four beat bar of music. So you know that that's counting four times one two three four then the bar repeats. Everything in rhythm stems from the idea of what's called a whole note. So a whole note is when the note or the chord that I play is the same duration as the bar. So I'm going to strum a chord and hold it for four beats. So for this I'm going to use an E major chord and I'm also going to use an A major chord. When you're practicing these exercises you can use whatever chords you want but if you're just starting out those two great ones to learn to kick things off. So to explain the concept of a whole note, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play an E major chord on the one beat. So when I count one I'm going to strum that chord. That's going to ring for four whole beats. So one two three four. At the end of the four my next bar starts. On the next one I want to be on my next chord which is the A major. So I'm going to do the E major for four beats the A major for four beats one strum on each chord on the one beat. So where we get different rhythmic variations is when we start splitting that down into smaller subdivisions. So if I split a whole note in half I get what's called a half note. So instead of having one note or one chord that lasts for four beats I now have two notes that each last for two beats. That sounds like this. If I then split those half notes in half I get four notes that last for one beat each. These are known as quarter notes. Quarter notes are a very very common rhythmic variation that you're going to hear a lot of. So by this point I'm now playing a single strum on each of the four beats of the bar. If I want to add more to this I can't add an extra beat because there's only four beats in the bar so I now have to think between the beats. So if we now split our quarter notes in half instead of having one note on each beat we now have two on each beat. So we're going to count this with an and and we're also going to bring in some up strumming. So on each beat we're going to go one and, two and, three and, four and. So doing a down and an up on each beat. And we can go one step further we can split those eighth notes in half and get sixteenth notes. This now gives us four strums for every single beat. So we now need to insert another strum either side of the and. So to count this we're now going to go one e and a. So that's our four notes across one beat down up down up one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a. So because we're adding a lot more strumming hits here the chord changes are going to need to be that little bit faster but don't worry if you can't nail it straight away slow this right down and focus on getting that change clean. When you start to learn songs you're not just going to be doing one of these rhythmic patterns you're going to be combining each of those patterns across different beats in the bar. So the whole aim here is to keep the tempo nice and steady. So the counting one two three four is the same but we're dividing the amount of things we do in between those beats. So when we do a sixteenth note the length of the one to the two is exactly the same as it is when we do a quarter note except we're strumming four times instead of one. So here's all those strung together without the tempo changing. So you can see the count between all of those different subdivisions was exactly the same the only thing that changed was the speed that I was picking and the amount of times I was picking over each beat. So now we're going to learn five simple rhythms that you guys can learn that use all these combinations and you can put whatever chords you want into this. So once again I'm going to use the e and the a major chords but feel free to change these chords up for whatever you want. Rhythm number one is a nice simple one quarter notes all the way through with an eighth note on the fourth beat. One two three four and so we're doing a down and up on the fourth beat. Second rhythm we're going to do eighth notes on the one and two and quarter notes on the three and four. So the count for this is going to be one and two and three four down up down up down down. Third rhythm I'm going to do is going to be quarter notes on the one and two and eighth note on the three and sixteenth note on the four. So the count for this is one two three and four e and a. The fourth rhythm I'm going to learn is sixteenth notes on the first and second beat and eighth notes on the third and fourth. So the count for this is one e and a two e and a three and four and. And the fifth and final rhythm I'm going to do is going to use a bit of space. So we're going to do a half note on the one. So that means I'm strumming on the one and holding it over the two. I'm doing an eighth note on the three and a quarter note on the four. So it's one two which is just the hold for the first one one two three and four. So like I said you can play those five different rhythm types with whatever chords you're comfortable with but e and a are great ones to start with if you're just starting out on your guitar journey. And don't forget if you're struggling with the chord changes on any of those faster ones slow the rhythm down so you're in charge of the tempo of this. So if you're struggling with those changes bring it right down and get comfortable with the changes first of all. So there you go guys there's a little insight into how rhythm works and the building blocks of rhythm guitar. This is the first part of a little series we're doing on rhythm and we're going to start to break down some classic classic rhythms in just a few videos. So if there are any songs you guys want us to break down as part of the series please throw them down below in the comments. We want to know what songs you guys want to break the rhythms down of. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video. Don't forget to check out Blackstar amplification on YouTube for more free video lessons just like this. And if you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please head over to mgrmusic.com. It's a network of great teachers all over the UK waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you soon.