How To Count Music – Easy Guide For Beginners
In this lesson, I’m going to teach you one of the most important exercises for improving your strumming and rhythm on guitar.
Any time a student of mine has a problem with rhythm, we go back to square one: counting… and building it up from there, we’re successful every single time. In this series, I’m going to show you the three big steps that we take to go from two left feet to confident strummer!
This Lesson Is Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
- Part 2 – Essential Rhythm Concept Explained in 5 Minutes
- Part 3 – A Simple Trick That Makes Long & Fast Strumming Patterns Easier
The lesson begins with an easy but essential exercise. We need to learn how to count along with music! We start by clapping along to a simple song, “You Are My Sunshine.”
Once we can clap along to it, we can learn how to count along to music. The only part that’s going to give you any trouble is finding beat 1. Beat 1 is like the key of the rhythm – in the same way that there will be a root note for the scale, beat one is the root of the rhythm.
If you are unable to clap or count along with songs, this is what I would focus on if I were you. Everybody who has good rhythm can easily clap along to songs, so I encourage you to pursue this and not simply move past it. This is the fastest way to improve your rhythm on guitar!
Once we can clap along to a song, one of the most useful things you can do is find the BPM of a song. We can use the tap tempo feature on our metronomes and there are also many websites dedicated to tap tempo. You just click along with the song at the same pace that you would clap, and the metronome will tell you what BPM your song is.
For this one your assignment is simple: clap along to some songs you enjoy and try counting along. Remember, finding beat one is a bit of a trial and error process so try your best! Rhythm is a muscle and like any muscle you will improve the more you work at it!
See you next time with Episode 2 of the series! Take care!
-James
