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KEEPING TIME
It doesn’t matter how many chords you know or how well you read music, if you can’t keep perfect time you have big problems. Keeping a perfect count must be top of your list every time, after all, how could you work with other musicians in a band if you can’t keep perfect time.
Its ok when you are at home practicing, you can use a metronome (time keeping device) but you just can’t spend the rest of your life walking around with a metronome in your pocket, you have to be able to keep perfect time in your head.
This isn’t something that you should think is going to be difficult for you to achieve for all humans are born with a natural perfect rhythm, after a while you will play with a perfect count without even thinking about it.
The two methods I have found to be most successful with my pupils are as follows....
- Think of a ticking clock in your mind, TICK TOCK TICK TOCK etc, every time you say a TICK or a TOCK in your mind that is the exact time you play a string or strum a chord, slightly before or slightly after and your count is off.
- Think of soldiers marching, they keep perfect time, LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT etc, that’s why some of the very best time keepers are musicians who play in military bands, they are accompanied by a human metronome of five or six hundred soldiers with all their boots hitting the floor at the exact same time.
Believe in your own natural rhythm and you will be fine.
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