Hi Lee, your books are terrific as is the site. Really helpful stuff.
My question is around timing & rhythm. I feel like I have no natural sense of rhythm and that whatever consistency and flow I achieve always comes from brute force effort and constantly feels like it’s going to slip away any moment. What’s the best way to develop an ear for timing and rhythm, and the “feel” for the hand and finger coordination needed to improve this weakest aspect of my playing? Even guitarists without a great repertoire or a ton of flashy skills sound great when they can play a nice steady beat and sustain it come what may.
I’d love to improve this basic skill before I dig too much deeper on the more technical stuff we talk about here – or at least give it 50% or more of my attention for a while. I am working more with a metronome these days, and it certainly helps. What else can I do to boost progress?
Mike, I get the feeling you might not be as bad as you think.
The slow blues you are talking about, is this when you jam with others or do you have the same problem with jam tracks as well?
Let me tell you now, Willie Nelson can be a nightmare with timing. I’ve covered a few of his songs in the past and some of them I stop trying to replicate, just find my own way.
Some musicians are like this. What they do, they do well and it sounds great , but it can be a personal feel that they have going on which is not easy for others to just jump into and play along.
Dylan is the same, not so much with time keeping but amount of beats per bar, or amount of random extra bars can really throw you.
James Brown was apparently a nightmare.
All of these people work with top musicians and often these musicians have to get used to what they do, it doesn’t necessarily come naturally.
I have just had a listen to the Willie Nelson song, this version …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ74DwKazcQ
Two things to notice here.
The feel of the song is 6/8.
The pianist is all over the place. If I was playing in that band I would have to zone out of the piano because it would drive me insane.
Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but if you are trying to keep time in your head then you’d need to ignore the piano as much as possible and concentrate on another instrument, preferably the drums.
The 6/8 thing..
Even though there is not much going on that’s playing strictly 6/8 rhythms, this is definitely the feel of the song.
When playing along with this song try to keep the 6/8 going in your head. Try to feel the groove as 123 456 or just 123 123.
Unless this is what you are already doing, I think that this will help you a lot.
If this doesn’t make sense then let me know and I’ll try explain a bit more.
