 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson let's look at rhythm and how you can improve your rhythm skills instantly. These are some proven strategies. Why I say proven? It's because I have found these problems along the way jamming with my fellow musicians working in a recording studio, performing on stage and these are what you would call as survival instincts to become a better musician in general and get one box or one of the three elements of music picked and made very instinctive along the way. Melody, rhythm and harmony are always there. Your tunes, your licks, your riffs, your bass lines, your chords, chord progressions, why not bank or template the rhythm patterns or the rhythm and get that done and dusted. It's one of those things in music where you know if you play the wrong note, if you play the wrong chord everyone stares at you and says hey what did this guy do? You will also stop playing and you'll be a bit flustered oh man I made a mistake. But rhythm is one of those hidden things so if you make an error sometimes if you're not experienced enough or if you don't pass through these sort of portals or stages of rhythm training you might not even know that you're wrong and I found this with a lot of students, my own a few bandmates, myself I've also been you know creating the problem of rhythm so to speak when I didn't even know I'm wrong in the first place. So these are some definitely proven strategies to help you improve your rhythm instantly. So you may have to slow down a lot of what you're playing, take anything you know on the piano. This is not a very dependent, this is not a very exercise dependent lesson in the sense I'm not going to say right hand does this, left hand does this. It's more of a macro perspective to have a bird's eye view on the topic of rhythm and make sure you've got all the boxes ticked when it comes to you being a rhythmic force. I would always hope that when you play music in an ensemble, play music in the band, you are the best at rhythm. You want to at least think that you are the best otherwise what tends to happen is you will start following the next the the person you think you have to follow it could be the drummer. We all think that drummer should be followed because we assume that they are the best at time. No, why can't the guy who's best at rhythm be the best at time? Simple. Everyone starts following that individual, right? So you want to strive to be the best. You want the entire band or your choir or your vocalist to rely on you and being good with rhythm is super crucial when you're performing on stage but way more important I think when you're in a studio because in a studio you tend to feel at times that you're all alone. So it's only you with that metronome in a lot of cases and when you get one element wrong everything else will sound more and more wrong with respect to the song which you're trying to record. Right guys? So before we get cracking it'll be nice if you can consider hitting that subscribe button and turn on the bell icon for regular notifications. So the first thing I'd like you to do when you play any kind of music on any musical instrument is the pulse. So if I play a simple tune it may be scored out for you, you may have got it by your, you may have this melody to play, you know. Do not play the melody until and unless you are able to move your head or some body part the easiest to move is your head. What I try to do is just move the upper body a bit with the pulse. A lot of people may say tap your foot but the problem there is as piano players our feet are occupied with the pedals. I even tell this to drummers you know your leg is on the kick so try to move your body when you play even drums as I tell certain people. So if you take anything, what happens is if you can move to your own music you are 100% right. There is no chance that you know if you wanted someone else to move to you then you have to move to yourself you have to kind of be your own audience so to speak and the best way to get that is to feel the pulse from within and just move it consistently. Now you may be playing music that you find it tough to you know actually get this done so I would suggest to slow it down or you know some rather funny sounding techniques you can look at yourself in a mirror and just see if you know you are a bit you are jerking while you move. When you are jerking you know or when you stop moving you are uncertain and if you are uncertain and if you are not able to play with the pulse you know 3 4 you need to always feel the pulse when you play and this is the this is a skill I have learned over the years I may not I may not be familiar with the chords that the band are currently playing I may not know the song but as long as I can move to the pulse I feel that I am I am in the game I am at least in the playing field playing the game with the grouper with the ensemble right pulse is very very important and to work on it a simple tip would be listen right now just after this video listen to a few of your favorite songs and just move to it you don't have to dance well you could if you want but just move to your favorite songs and just try to get that pulse all songs if they are to connect with us need some kind of repetitive flow of information and the song is not going to go 1 2 3 the song is not going to play on on the pulse it's going to be other notes other divisions but you have to continue to move over the pulse okay now I move my entire body but I would be happy if you just move your head but if you're moving your head be a bit careful if it's too fast so I just like to move with the song you know and don't don't move your shoulders as a piano player just move your upper body and keep your back straight generally when you play and keep your core muscles activated that will allow you to move the pulse without too much of you know instability if you will so don't kind of drop your shoulders or relax your core muscles your core has to generally be a bit tightened when you play and then you can do these things you know whether you play soft you should still move all loud if you see musicians on stage they are consistently moving dancing jumping around right you may think have they rehearsed all of that stuff in my opinion I think 9 out of 10 of these musicians have not rehearsed it it just comes out instinctively on stage you know because you can truly feel the pulse so moving on another very important thing you need to do to improve your rhythm instantly would be to feel the subdivisions of the beat so if the song is on any time signature whether it's 4 by 4 3 by 4 or anything there will be a pulse as I told you earlier but the music is not going to be expressed only on the pulse the container or the beat would have many subcontainers to fill other notes or other musical pieces of data and that could be notes could be chords it could be whatever so when subdivisions happen be a bit clear on how is my song being subdivided is my song dividing by two one and two and three and four and is my song dividing by three one two and three and four and is my song dividing by four one and two and three and four you can even use some uh Indian words to count it tuck tuck tuck for dividing by two tuck it tuck it tuck it tuck it divide by three dividing by four so these tools get us to understand the division system and when you divide by two and four remember that the division point need not always be at the 50 mark of the beat if it's dividing by two it may not be at the exact 25 percent or the 75 percent mark of the beat if it's dividing by four there can be a kind of a swing as we call it so instead of going one and two and three and four you go one tuck tuck tuck tuck and a lot of songs now let's say if you feel some swing you can kind of transform some songs from their original so the beat and e and uh three e and like one and two so the beats are divided by you could say by two one and two and three and four and but not like the original one tuck tuck tuck so that's straight so you need to kind of feel those subdivisions or well instead of using the word feel I would say just know your subdivisions just know that the song is divided and then you'll not you're going to be more attentive when music hits hits you or when different rhythmic things come your way okay because you know oh I'm dividing by three it's a triplet song or I'm one and two and I'm dividing by four if I divide by four it's swinging so it's not one e and a two e and it's one t and two e and a three e and a four e and a one tuck tuck tuck can also call it maybe shuffle and within these subdivisions you can also generate what I like to call sometimes as a time feel maybe you have this specific rhythm or this specific micro movement of beats which you can relate to maybe you divide by four one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and but maybe I don't want to play at the e I want to go up so you can bank this sort of groove in your mind as maybe call it a gallip or something like that you know so feeling the subdivisions is very important we've done a lot of lessons on our channel to practice subdivisions like I said in this lecture I'm just going to talk about the stuff which is important the practice will be on our channel if you're a first time viewer or if you've not subscribed do consider hitting that button you'll get a lot of videos to help teach you this stuff okay so feel the subdivisions divide by two divide by three divide by four now the third point maybe slightly controversial because maybe you haven't heard of it I guess it's about making friends with a ghost now you may think how do I find a ghost well it's pretty easy all you need to do is when you play an instrument you need to just ask yourself what is the drummer going to do or invoke the drummer in you a good tip would be play this record it on your cell phone or on a door very quickly maybe a loop now what would the drummer do over that as you listen to it now if you're unaware of what a drummer would do practice with some backing tracks or some resources which which have just drums in them you know you could check out some of my riffs that might be a good good starting point where you'll have drums playing pretty much on most of the genres time signatures and feels out there so keep that drum groove sort of stuck with you you know and just play with that in your head so all I'm trying to say is when you're playing the guitar or the piano or the bass or anything don't play blind as I sometimes tell people play as though a drummer were right next to you that's why I say ghost drummer so what this will help is well it's not just going to keep you on time and improve your rhythm instantly it's also going to get you to play with a lot more feeling with a lot more groove because groove is not just hitting the notes at the exact time it's about that little bit of human flair where we sometimes adjust the volume of certain chords we might want to swing it slightly off the radar it's just a bit of imperfections which we as humans love about each other so as you can see I have this groove in my head I don't know drumming mind you but I have this sense that there is a drummer with me and I'm not alone there is this kind of ghost now if you're having an issue with really imagining the drums then maybe imagine a simpler drum or a drum that relates to you maybe a tabla maybe you've grown up listening to a lot of the tabla or a jembe or a darbuka or maybe even a simple shaker I have one by the way so what can you do with a shaker stuff like this so so you keep that groove and then you don't necessarily play this anymore you can keep it back and get that to be part of your engine so to speak okay see I have that so there's a ghost drummer ghost tabla ghost something or even a ghost shaker which would always be with you when you play your music I tell this to pretty much any musician who I end up meeting or teaching or jamming with so moving forward this is something which guitar players singers and even drummers tend to like never do or feel a bit shy or don't think it's even important at times that would be if you're playing a song which has lyrics or even a basic melody you need to sing that melody while you're playing so this will apply on the piano if I'm dealing with a chord progression let's say so if I have if the melody was look at the piano and think hey it's not the melody it has nothing to do with the melody so how is this going to help well for starters you could be a singer songwriter you would you would be the guy singing and playing the instrument but if you are playing with someone else and your friend gives you the chord charts you learn the chords and say hey I'm ready to jam I'm ready for the rehearsal you go for the rehearsal the singer is there maybe the singer decided to slow down the song maybe the singers change the feel of the song it sounds as per their personality or maybe that the singer is relying on you now if someone is relying on you you have to know the song so you can't just say hey I have the charts here I'm going to read it and play it and there's this kind of thing in in our industry at least here in India where you see the charts and then you tell everyone I'm going to play with charts I'm going to read the charts or I have the notation don't worry I'm going to play with this official staff notation score and whatnot trust me if if the song has vocals or if the song has melody if you don't know that you'll not feel very good because when you make a mistake you're not going to be able to recover or come back so now you hear that now I had two notes there what if you were the one composing the chords so you could say hey at those two melodic notes let's get two chords instead of one maybe you can go a bit beyond the chord chart like that's a nice slash chord there b flat over f resolving to f so you're more you're more with the song and if you're a studio player and if you work in a studio as a producer arranger or some kind of a musician in a studio if inevitably whether there's a singer or not we communicate our ideas to each other with our voice and even if someone were to you know play a tune on the guitar or the violin you have to if ever you have a change the fastest way to suggest a change is to sing it for those respective musicians so make sure you are singing and playing at all times that gives you a lot more awareness of the song let's move forward so the metronome it's something which I guess every book tells you every teacher every google search will say how do I improve my timing everyone says metronome you need to play with the metronome or else you're doomed well I disagree so I'll give you a story which happened the first time I went to a studio and I was really scared because it was my first time and I was the younger kid in the band I was almost eight years younger to my other bandmates so we were supposed to record for a four song EP and I didn't know what to do because all my bandmates were recording on metronomes they were already experienced musicians this was my first time and I hadn't even heard a metronome before to be honest I've never even used it for my personal practice so I went there and strangely enough things just worked fine and I realized that I was practicing more with the song more with the drummer more in this kind of hostile environment where if I do anything wrong the singer is going to fall down the singer will is dependent on me the drummer is dependent on me so that I think should not be taken for granted you have to practice with people getting that real real world perspective when you're jamming rehearsing or recording but when you are recording and when you're getting into some serious practice the metronome is very important so I would always tell someone who's maybe new to music do not start with the metronome take your time and then after about after you feel after you do all the things which I told you earlier move your head feel the ghost drummer sing and play feel the subdivisions then to prove that okay I am a rhythm champion or something you use the metronome to kind of validate your skill as a as a player so use the metronome generally at the last stage and after all after the previous points are done and dusted you can then use the metronome as a kind of reassurance and then take that into the studio play along with the metronome and you can even be the guy who starts the song the person who starts the song in a studio environment is most important because that serves as the reference for for everyone right a great example would be Freddie Mercury from Queen the way he played Bohemian Rhapsody the story is he played it and then everyone followed his piano so we've done numerous videos on the metronome we link up an important video in the description which you have to check out and just to throw this in with the metronome don't practice it at fast speeds you don't want to go then you kind of become super dependent you almost become a slave to that metronome rather I would I would have the metronome going very slow something like so you should feel all those other beats so jazz musicians always like the metronome at the two and the four they turn off the one and the three when they practice what I like to do since I'm a bit lazy is I use this app called pro metronome you should check it out you can kind of go and highlight the numbers there itself and turn off certain beats and if you if you're like me and you're even more lazier you can choose a certain speed let's say your original tempo is 120 beats per minute what you could then do is practice at 60 so then what happens is it's the same music but you're less dependent on it watch this in our metronome video I'm not going to elaborate too much so a simple tip would be let the metronome play the song at the same speed but reduce the speed of the metronome and the metronome these days in in today's day and age almost all bands who end up calling themselves professional especially for non-routes genres you know or the modern genres if you're a dance band if you're a rock band if you're a metal band or a funk band most of these ensembles will go on stage with a metronome and the the magic of technology there would be they wear these wireless in-ear monitors or earphones or headphones and the signal or the metronome is given as an output only to the musicians ears and the musician can choose how much of the metronome they would like and the audience obviously will not hear it imagine the audience also hearing the metronome then it becomes a music class for your whole band for your whole concert audience anyway so metronome very important moving on this is something I thought as a as a more younger musician was not important and I almost said ah it sucks this is notation okay so what I like about notation from the point of view of improving your rhythmic ability first off if you develop the discipline to listen to anything that you're about to learn and write it down transcribe it be able to say be able to explain it in a piece of paper I think that skill is a very very tried and tested skill for musicians of all eras and if you want to study a lick from a great musician a jazz player like like Miles Davis or John Coltrane or Louis Armstrong the best way to do it is just isolate a lick from one of their big amounts of phrases or long solos and learn that but how are you going to learn it you know it's going so fast so what I would then do is maybe slow it down using a software or any tool and write down whatever notes so that the act of transcription is I listen and I write listen and I write and what tends to happen from a wider perspective is you try to be more one with that song or more one with that performance and sometimes I would do transcription even for a part that I'm not involved with it could be a saxophone part it could be a vocal part I just like to write down whatever I have to write and it just gives me that that discipline and that confidence and encouragement that I can play this song that is notation from a transcription perspective however if you're given the notation already it's a great way to assess what you're doing how long the chords are going to be changed for by reading the chord charts ability the length of notes is very important so you plan and what I used to do is because I didn't know exactly how long everything was for I would follow my guitarist I'll follow my drummer and that's what I said in the very beginning you need to follow yourself when you play the others are just there you're syncing with them but you're following your own skill your own inherent ability to be good at timing so notation very important and just to take notation forward a little bit you need to bank on some rhythmic devices as I call them and I've done a video called binary rhythm strategies which you definitely need to check out the binary idea which I have for rhythmic devices is you take the time feel concept or the subdivisions concept which I told you earlier you're dividing by two so if you're dividing by two there are two slots a beat will have correct now in those two slots you can play or not to play that is the question so if you have to play at beat one and not play at the subdivision and of the one well that's your choice but then you can do other things you can not play anything play both so it starts becoming binary because it's yes or no isn't it so if you represent that in a binary perspective you divide by two it's going to be two raised to n where n will then be two and and that'll give you the number of possibilities you divide by three n equals three two power three equals eight so you have to study eight rhythmic devices or permutations as I call them you divide by four things are going to start getting interesting you get into the semi quaver world and you bank all those devices so if you divide by by four two power four equals sixteen and a few of the permutations just to walk you through if you do two power four equals sixteen four out of those permutations could be maybe tick x tick tick so play don't play play play how will that sound that's the x there what if you put the x at the third one e and so that'll be what if you put the x at the uh there we go so all these patterns start getting more recognizable maybe you heard it in a song and you're like oh wow now it's that song and then that song is also the same as that song you can connect music a lot better one more permutation right where you don't play at the one itself again the pulse I come back to the another important need to move your head while you play because I don't even have music on the on beat so banking of rhythmic devices is what I call it where you need to store it in your bank and bring it out organically sometimes spontaneously whenever the need demands or it just happens you know because you're you have a bank you have a library with all these things and your brain is really powerful it can bring things out you know which you stored from maybe even two three years ago it can just come out and you already know that I'm sure I don't have to explain the human brain so the last thing I'd like to talk about to improve your rhythm almost instantly is find a band find a choir find just a fellow apartment mate or someone living in your you know your complex or your neighborhood just jam with them and you don't have to jam with any kind of objective just jam for the love of music jamming basically means well you can jam in a few ways but one easy way would be you're both like a song and you can just discuss with each other probably over a phone call or a whatsapp chat thread and say we'll arrive at this song seems to be good let's do it on this key this scale you prepare yourself well it also kind of gives you a deadline because you know that the singer is going to come for a rehearsal so yeah I have to get this job done it works so you prepare get it done jam with them you get your work done tighter you get your work done way more efficiently and who knows after jamming regularly for about a month or a few weeks y'all y'all would have a almost ready to go set list of about eight to ten songs which is good for about 45 to 60 minutes of entertainment find a gig go on stage showcase your skills and at the end of the day music comes to us better reaches us more sort of aggressively and faster and more naturally also when we do it for the purpose of what music is for music is for us to entertain and to share with others so if you're stuck in a room practicing the piano or the guitar and if you think that is practice well it is but don't forget that you also have to practice with others though the amount it can help you is exponentially more okay so jam with a drummer jam with a singer throughout my journey I found that the toughest environments to play probably the toughest is a choir in my opinion because you're the one guy who everyone depends on you know so if there is even if you miss a chord or if you're scared to go to the next chord the choir is not going to wait for you they are going to move forward and another interesting environment I found over the years is doing a live theater show a live theater production where you know there are these specific cues you have to follow that exactly then and there so you put yourself into that kind of technical world where you're very attentive and you're you learn and you become better as a musician and you also have a lot more fun if you ask me and of course playing on stage which I've been very blessed over over all these years to be able to do playing on stage in front of people and them coming to you after the show and saying anything it could be well done you know give me more of your music or they could even say I didn't like the show something like that you know anything could happen the feedback is also very important and whenever you receive feedback I always like to receive it after I've showcased it on stage or you know in an album or in a record feedback anywhere else is something you know like a social media comment it'll just happen and you can ignore it so on stage someone has experienced you and they come and tell you something that gives you very important motivation to then journey forward okay so these are some proven ways to improve your rhythm skills instantly do check out playlists on our Nathaniel youtube channel you can also head over to our website and do a rhythm course or learn rhythm the theory the year training and the notation all together with our flagship music method program it's a six month semester course so all this should hopefully get you better at rhythm right rhythm is the backbone of music you can you can do all the other stuff somehow you can figure it out but rhythm is the most internal you have to get it into your bloodstream so to speak it has to come from within and you will feel a lot more confidence I hope as a musician follow all these strategies and start slow and if you get frustrated well you should that if you want to learn it's it's a harsh thing to say but you're not practicing music to feel good all the time you're practicing music to go forward and get better so in some cases I would say rather than get the frustration to you be a bit aggressive and throw it out of you in the sense as you practice like kind of force yourself to get it done do whatever you can because frustration will kick in frustration is just trying to tell you stop playing but you have to be aggressive and you have to say no I have to do this I have to finish this and move forward so all the best with that thanks a ton for watching the video and I will catch you in the next one cheers