Creative Guitar Rhythm

Rhythm notation is not real! It’s a representation of music and we can easily miss a note by a millisecond or so.

I believe that even the most accurate guitarists (Polyphia?) can’t play notes as quantised software would (sounds like a fun experiment though 🙂).

But that’s actually a good thing!

Because alongside a constant pulse, a creative thing to do is to improvise with it. Just behind the beat, just ahead of it, somewhere in between the beats…

That’s an important lesson I learned from Al Di Meola. He stressed the need to keep a steady pulse by tapping with the foot while letting the guitar notes dance around it.

More than a great exercise, that’s also one of his main compositional tools.

As an example, I improvised a short “one-note solo” over a click and let Logic Pro do its magic and turn it into a score.

The first score above is quantised (to 16th/24th notes) and captured the essence well but not the precise rhythm.

The second score below is as close as possible to a real representation of the music, but who can play it like that? 😃

Notes can’t convey the live feel and expression.

So my bottom line is: after learning rhythm notation, rhythm patterns and practising “playing in time”, you can then begin to experiment and practise “playing out time” 🙃

Hope this helps with your rhythm expressiveness! 🎶