Published:
2018-09-19
Updated:
2019-12-24
Learning Ukulele with Curt
Rhythm - Avoid at Your Own Peril
The often neglected and taken for granted subject of Rhythm. Music is Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. We are drawn, initially to music by melody at a very early age, with the instrument of our voice. With ukulele you typically learn chords - the harmony and never really dive into learning rhythm. Unless you're a drummer we take rhythm for granted.
Author(s): Curt Sheller Publisher: Curt Sheller Publications Code: UW-MPR-Rhythm
Main Category: Rhythm Main Instrument: Any
Subjects: Chords
2019-12-24
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The often neglected and taken for granted subject of Rhythm. Music is Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. We are drawn, initially to music by melody at a very early age, with the instrument of our voice. With ukulele you typically learn chords - the harmony and never really dive into learning rhythm. Unless you're a drummer we take rhythm for granted.
Rhythm (from Greek rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry" (Liddell and Scott 1996)) generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions" (Anon. 1971, 2537). This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry.
“I Don’t Have Rhythm”
Read this next line out loud:
1 2 3 4
You probably read this in tempo and evenly 1 2 3 4. Unless you read this like Christopher Walken you have rhythm and can play music in time.
Most ukulele plays first encounter their perception of “I don’t have rhythm”. When trying to execute a strumming pattern in tempo, in a style they are only passively familiar with.
“A strum is the execution of a rhythmic pattern — in a specific style and tempo.”