On beat, or not? How do I _know_

thats why I always wait for the Black friday to take my yearly subscription at half price

you should just try it with a monthly subscription at the beginning if you really want that feature to learn :slight_smile:

I am going to run counter to much advice offered here.
Firstly, let me say, rhythm is all important, the fundamental of music, and having a good sense of rhythm is something to develop and always be working on.
However, you’re four months in to learning to play guitar and trying to use a computer recording and waveform pattern to inform you - to the millisecond - whether you are playing in time. That does not sit well with me. It is far too technical and robotic at your stage of learning.
In my view, you would be much better served listening to and being rhythmic along with great music, songs that are all good rhythm. And my main recommendation would be songs that were recorded before computers and click tracks and quantisation and lining up to the grid became part of the recording studio process. Play along with humans … whose music may have slight fluctuations in tempo, a little quicker in the chorus, a little slower in the bridge … Music is a human endeavour, musicians collected together, responding to one another in real time and their energy feeding in to the groove.

Rest your fretting fingers across your guitar strings below fret five or above fret 12 so you hear a fully muted percussive sound when you strum.
Load up a playlist of groovy songs.
Forget chords.
Just play along as a percussionist.
This will help you develop a sense of rhythm better than reading a waveform will - and be a whole lot more fun.

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+1 to what @Richard_close2u said. You’ve already got 2 ears, 2 hands, at least 1 foot to tap to the rhythm, a body to move… that’s all you really need. And they cost pretty much nothing compared to fancy softwares that you have to first figure out how to use, and that would distract you from the music itself.

Don’t get me wrong, softwares have their place in the recording/editing/mixing process, but you will hardly want to rely on them to tell you if you’re playing in time or not, especially in a live setting.

Search a song you like (maybe one you already know quite well for a start), tap your foot to the rhythm and strum along as Richard advised above.

Edit: you could try it with this song (Fame by David Bowie):

There’s mostly one chord played all along (save for the intro and its repetition around the middle of the song) and the rhythm couldn’t be simpler, yet it’s still pretty groovy.

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And I agree with that

that feature is appealing when you start but after a while you realise that you do not need it and it becomes bothersome

I agree with the most recent posts. The best piece of tech is just using a phone to record video of you playing, then watch it back, if it sounds good then it is good. No one in an audience is measuring your performance to the millisecond so you shouldn’t either. Trying to achieve that level of precision will kill any joy out of playing guitar as you’ll either not achieve it or just sound robotic.

My practice is mostly playing along to original recordings which I believe to better (and more enjoyable) than playing along to a metronome. It’s the closest that most of us beginners will get to playing along with live musicians. I’m not saying a metronome has no value but training your ear to the beat of a song is more practical (in my opinion). Again a simple recording soon tells me how well I kept time.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that I bet Slash or Angus Young never got good at guitar by measuring their playing against waveforms on a screen!

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I do agree with Richard, that reviewing exactly where you are compared with the beat is probably inappropriate for someone this early in their journey, so perhaps I shouldn’t have suggested it.
However, I do think there is value later in your journey in understanding where you are. It’s not about being robotic but about being able to push or drag at will. I can’t do it yet, but I will be working on it.
The waveform idea came from one of Justin’s lessons, but I can’t remember where - it certainly won’t have been a beginner lesson :slight_smile:
I’m sure Slash and Angus didn’t use that, but I’ll also take bets that they didn’t use tabs or online apps either!

:100:% with all @Richard_close2u says, thanks Richard for putting it down so well into words.

@mundeli mute the strings and strum along with real music …it’s so much fun and useful practice!

Hello all, and thank you so much for your considered, and experiencially informed advice.

In a weak attempt at self justification of investing the time to figure it out, in the past I’ve deceived myself due to “confirmation bias”. I wanted an “impartial judge” to confirm/refute my thoughts about my playing in time before reinforcing neural pathways to nowhere

AND the bottom line for me is music is about having fun listening and (soon?) creating it, and of course music can bring a smile to others → a wonderfully BIG bonus!

My goal is to be able to play like Etta Baker or Mississippi John Hurt, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t use Garageband
…as @Richard_close2u frequently intones, (I’m parphrasing here) “play songs, furcryingoutload!”

Again–thank you all for helping me on this wondrous adventure.

That’s a paraphrase I like!! haha :slight_smile:

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I like it. :slight_smile:
My only nits are how songs come to you (the inspiration) or how you go about learning and playing those songs is hugely undefined. Sure you can just latch on to a youtube song lesson and play as presented and by rote from then on. No shame there, if that’s all you need or want musically or creatively.

If you start early with learning common chord progressions, chords in a key (circle of 5ths for some) and a touch of ear training (intervals) --it will serve you incredibly well and open most of the musical doors moving forward, including song writing.

As for rhythm, there’s a lot of value in taking a simple song sheet and then “suss” it out in your own sense of time:


Certainly simplifies your song choice inputs and is something to work up to. Capo and/or transpose to your liking or vocal abilities.

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