Clap Along: Play recorded music and have your child clap or march to the beat. Then have them try clapping along with different rhythms.
Can you hear different rhythms played by different instruments? Try clapping along with those rhythms, or with a rhythm you make up on your own. Echoes: You can play this game even with a very young child.
Clap, tap or speak a simple rhythm, then your child echoes that rhythm. Give your child a chance to come up with a rhythm and see if you can echo it! Freeze Dance: Play recorded music. Encourage your child to dance to the beat, but let them know they have to freeze when the music pauses. Pause the music at random times. When you are able to do this comfortably, proceed to the next exercise, where you are going to create notes that take up only one beat.
When you are able to do this comfortably, proceed to the next exercise, where you are going sing a different pattern. When you are reading sheet music notation, you group notes into individual beats so that you can play them. The beat is generally broken into smaller subdivisions, in the above examples, further dividing the "Da" into more notes in a given beat , but since you have just learned to subdivide a 4 beat measure into individual beats, you can easily learn to divide a beat into smaller components too.
Now we will starting using note heads to represent the basic beat and the rhythm that you will sing. Tap the top line and sing the bottom line, use "Da" for the notes. The following group of notes uses sixteenth notes to further subdivide the beat. If all else fails, then the Eurhythmics idea is where you want to look. Everyone has an innate internal clock so that we don't fall over when walking from point A to point B.
You've got to use this to "bootstrap", essentially, his musical rhythm. You may have to work backwards at first, have him walk around the room at a steady pace, and play some music on your guitar that matches with his pace. Eventually, you'll have him go in the other direction, having him change his walking pace to match the music that you are playing. You should use a little tempo variation from example to example, but make sure you're playing at a speed that is easily walkable.
Too fast or too slow and the exercise will fail. After that part is learned, then you can add steady beat claps while walking, and go from there. There are other approaches, and most educators will use different components of each for different concepts.
You should be able to find more resources and examples by Googling Dalcroze Eurhythmics. Perhaps you could try working on walking in time.
That should be simple enough to explain and includes basic physical feedback on the activity. The difference in the pace between walking and running might be helpful. If you can forget about the actual playing of the guitar, play a recording of the tune which we're learning, and ask your student to just groove in their seat. Then introduce a bit of free-style muted strumming, but continuing the chair dancing. The most important aspect in this approach is to get them to loosen up and not be shy about it, "look at me I'm dancing like a tuneless fool" has to be the battle cry.
YMMV, but I've used this on some utterly rhythemless people in the past and, although it might not have made them into the funkiest man in the whole damn town it does help get over the initial shyness. He more than likely is attempting to guess where the beats and rests are. If he is beat deaf, then making him practise this is only going to cause frustration for him. There used to be an online test linked to the study but the study ended, the results of the study is found here.
Perhaps record him playing and have him listen to it. It could be that the act of performing the motions and remembering what comes next are taking up all his available attention. Listening to playback, however, has none of these distractions.
Another idea is get him to listen to lots of rhythmically-interesting music. Art Blakey's African Drum Ensemble, perhaps. Or some Taiko drumming. Or some of Sheila Chandra's vocal percussion.
Just to get more rhythm in his head. After further thought, I suspect an important issue might be the student's eagerness to please the teacher. While this may work well in scholastic studies, it will not serve him here. Music has to be selfish. I begin to fear that any "technique or exercise", presented as such, will not be diligently practiced at home.
It has to provide immediate gratification. It must be a technique the student desires to learn. And the only way I know to do that is to tie it directly to songs he wants to play.
So for every facet -- harmony, rhythm, tempo, articulation -- the first exercise on the sheet should be ripped straight from his favorite song. Then perhaps a few simplified or supporting variations. If the exercises are rewarding, they are much more likely to be profitable.
This edit was influenced by gingerbreadboy's surprisingly terrific answer. And draws from my own lack of diligence as a student. This is sooo old but as someone who is dance inclined not musically talented but still artistically talented in a visual way , I can relate.
I played drums for a time as well as piano and I sucked at rhythm and often tempo keeping. The way I solved this was by moving my body to the beat. Often, verbally saying in time, to the busiest part help me understand tempo. Being confused to where the beat is often is solved by just moving. Guitar sits in the far percussion range, often with drums and bass.
Doing hand work versus body work is difficult and uncomfortable to those who are not super musically minded. As a not regularly practiced musician, the best way to solve this is more music and movement. Get some busy music and force them to move regularly in time to it. The rest is a cake walk. I like classical or edm to dance to, or sing to, or chop to. Most songs have the feeling of three or four beats in each measure. Try both and see which one fits.
Remember, if it sounds like a waltz, then it probably has three beats per measure, but if it sounds like a march, then it probably has four beats per measure. Check out a video that demonstrates this exercise here.
Learning how to subdivide is the basis of establishing that internal sense of rhythm, and later, just figuring out tough rhythms! Subdivision is the practice of dividing the beats of a song into shorter beats. The following video visually details this rhythm exercise, but Dan also does a great job explaining it aurally.
Find a friend, a neighbor, a band, or a great teacher with TakeLessons whose sense of rhythm and timing you really admire, and then find time to play with them. Now, take that song that you recorded before, set the metronome to a slow, steady beat again, and play along. Watch this video where the metronome is demonstrated on the piano. Being just a hair behind or ahead of the beat pulls the listener in, and frankly, keeps us from sounding like robots, or some computer program that makes music.
It keeps us sounding human. Being human means being imperfect. Readers, what other rhythm exercises have helped you improve your skills?
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