(This is my first post here.) I started playing guitar when I was 16, but stopped for 6 years while I was at university. Last year I started again using Justin Guitar’s method and have progressed to level 2.
But now I’m stuck.
My long term goal is to play with other people, either in a (blues/60s/70s rock n roll) band or just accompanying people who like to sing. I don’t have any experience of accompanying someone / a band (at least as a guitarist). But I find it difficult to progress. Everything is fine until I have to master a certain level of expertise. I can play most minor and major chords, strum, improvise the pentatonic scales and some major scales. But when I practise songs, I miss most of the beats and I do not time my strumming properly. I also find it difficult to time basic fingerpicking to a metronome or song.
What would be a good practice routine to counter this and help me achieve my goal? And do other people have the same problem?
I think what you are describing is a common struggle for many in their guitar journey. You are discovering something that not everyone realizes when starting to learn- Rhythm is the foundation of everything you will do on the guitar. If you are solid with your rhythm, you can even play the wrong chords and it’s likely an audience won’t even notice. Alternatively, you could be improvising a complex solo and if your rhythm is off, it will not sound right.
I think it may help you to go back to basics with your strumming for a bit. Play along to a simple song, backing track or metronome and just practice doing 4 down strums per bar along to the beat for the whole song. Put fingerpicking to the side for now until you can do this comfortably and stay on the beat. Once you feel like you’ve got good timing doing this, you can start to add your strumming patterns back in. You may need to become very good friends with your metronome for a while until your timing improves and you start to really internalize those clicks.
It also may sound counterintuitive- but finding others to play with early on in your journey may also help you develop your sense of rhythm and timing a bit faster. Especially if your ultimate goal is to be in a band.
while I dunno if I ever want to be in a band (such a thing seems far off for me), I WOULD like to be able to jam with others and also to play along with my wife (who plays ukulele and sings better than me most of the time). I would even like to try my hand at singing with myself playing. I have similar challenges.
I have played with a jam group before, but I’ve only got a couple songs I can do that with. that said, when I’ve been with a jam group, I’ve found it helpful for my rhythm (regardless of whether I can play the chords or not) to just play muted strums with the objective of just finding the rhythm in the song the group is playing. If the jam group is large and the sound in the room is super chaotic (such as when lots of people have a hard time finding/following the rhythm or when they’re all strumming something different, or the acoustics are bad and echo, or all of the above), I have a really hard time.
I have attempted playing along with a few original recordings and also with some generated drum tracks. To me, those can be more challenging, depending. Sometimes the beat is hard for me to hear because the song features something else much more prominently (such as the vocals). Or, if the beat is extra complex, it throws a wrench into my brain. So I need to be choosy about it and play along with simpler things.
What has helped me get where I am is playing along with various video lessons and such. I’ve done this with Justin’s song material as well as the lessons on the TrueFire site. In those, the stuff they ask you to play along with in the early beginner levels is a lot less complex and I find it easier to find and keep to the rhythm.
I still have a long way to go and it can be difficult to see a path, but that path is there.
Hi Jan,
I’m also working on Grade 2. For strumming, I was surprised that the exercises are 3 minutes. For example Grade 1, mod 3 has a lot of strumming… Old Faithful, etc. Maybe revisit that module with emphasis on relaxing into the rhythms.
Best Wishes,
Rob
And don’t be afraid to slow the tempo WAY down for small sections of the song until you can reliably sync up with that tempo. Then you can speed up in small increments.
But note that too slow can be as hard to match as too fast…you’ll probably have to experiment to find a good tempo you can synch up with, and then proceed from there.
Also, search for a free course by Josh Skaja called “Metronome Boot Camp” for a really deep dive.
Try playing along with a basic slow drum track.
It has less diracting factors as a song, you’ll hear yourself better and it can be a welcome variation if you tried a metronome all the time.
It doesn’t even matter what chords and in what order, the focus is getting a basic strumming pattern down. Find a pattern that comes natural to you and don’t worry if you think it’s basic. That GROOVE and auto-pilot is what matter most now; get that engine chugging. Keep that strumming arm movign up and down, even if you aren’t hiting the strings. imagine being a locomotive.
Also, (re-)assess your SWOT and guitar goals to look into yourself and around you. Explore the different fields and decide what you want to become and how to get there. Following a North Star but goign in baby steps
If you have some good coffee or tea; sit back and follow this recording if you want to know more about goal setting and self-assessment
If you just want to play by yourself or along with record etc. then you can practice alone, but if your goal is to play with other people then you need to practice also with other people. The more you play with other people the better you will become. If you can find one other guitarist to jam with, one plays rhythm and the other lead and then swap. That is great because you can learn from each other as you go. If you can find another (non-guitarist) musician that is also good but requires more coordination with knowing the song or chords in a key etc. Playing along with others is key to performing / playing for other listeners. Playing with others and performing is like a whole skill skill on top of learning to play the instrument and requires practice just like anything else. You need to practice skills that you want to use right?
If you are looking for something structured, and high quality, you might want to check out Justins Strumming /Rhythm Course
Its a tremendous course. It helped me enormously, as it has done for many others. It has been completely updated and revamped since I did it, so it is likely even better.
Thank you all for these very useful tips! I will definitely try out the app and the courses you all mentioned. Playing to a very slow drum track sounds very helpful as well.
