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Reddit mentions of Melodic Rhythms for Guitar
Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 9
We found 9 Reddit mentions of Melodic Rhythms for Guitar. Here are the top ones.
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Height | 12 Inches |
Length | 9 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | November 1986 |
Weight | 0.55 Pounds |
Width | 0.23 Inches |
William Leavitt - Melodic Rhythms for Guitar
Thomas A. Brown - Afro-Latin Rhythm Dictionary
Justin London - Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter
Christopher Hasty - Meter as Rhythm
Charles Francis Abdy Williams - The Aristoxenian Theory of Musical Rhythm
Kalin Kirilov - Bulgarian Harmony: In Village, Wedding, and Choral Music of the Last Century (See his dissertation, which has a lot of the same content.)
Kofi Agawu - African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective
Kofi Agawu - Rhythmic Imagination in African Music (presentation), covering some of the topics in his book, The African Imagination in Music.
Richard Cohn - A Platonic Model of Funky Rhythms, or How to Get That Swing (presentation)
While you're considering the absolutely necessary chord tone advice on this thread, also consider jazz rhythms. They are essential to improvising a good solo. Try playing straight 16th note runs or quarter notes on the beat over changes. Your bandmates will perk up immediately re: how non-jazzy your playing is. You can nail all the right scales over the right chords, but if your phrasing is all over the place, robotic, and/or not-at-all in a groove, your solos aren't going to feel right.
A fantastic resource on jazz rhythms (besides listening to great players):
Melodic Rhythms for Guitar
In my experience, knowing rhythms while not knowing all the notes has proven very helpful. You could be playing mostly outside (melodically) while hitting chord tones on rhythmically important accents and play jazz rhythms throughout and your soloing can sound totally convincing.
That said, re: chord tones I've been working on arpeggiating chords in a single position for a given standard, and working my way through a variety of positions over a number of standards. This sounds like a lot of work, and it actually isn't. If you consider trying four positions (say 3, 5, 7, & 9), you could arpeggiate all the chords in a standard in four different ways in a single hour if you were efficient. You walk away with interesting realizations like "What does a 5th position Gmaj7 arpeggio look like" and so on. Do that enough and your fluency re: chord tones grows very quickly.
Just remember that groove matters a great deal in making your solos sound like jazz.
Sight reading has been my Achilles heel for most of my guitar playing life, so I can offer some suggestions based on what has helped me.
One is you need to stay in regular practice reading music, which is not necessarily the same as "sight reading." Experts say you're supposed to sight read to better your sight reading skills, but most music students (brass and woodwind players, pianists, percussionists) have been steeped in daily reading practice on their instruments for literally years before they get to college. Only rarely are they sight reading; most of what they read are pieces they're preparing for performance, so they're having the basics reinforced on a constant basis, and if they're in band, orchestra, or choir they have not only a director/conductor correcting them, but peers to help reinforce their learning.
For the most part guitarists don't encounter these situations until much later in their journeys, and by then everyone is a much better reader than they are, so it's pretty intimidating.
So, one solution is to get a fakebook and begin reading melodies every day, and not just sight read them, but learn them, and then reread them on the regular. This runs counter to what the experts say, but see above. You've got to have that regular grounding to get to the fluent sight reading stage.
Etudes are another way to reinforce this. Again, you're actually learning these to performance level, and not just "sight reading practice." An excellent book for this is Sam Most's Jazz Improvisation, which is 217 one chorus etudes on the changes to different standard tunes.
Another book which has helped me a lot and I've used with reading practice in college guitar classes is Wm. Leavitt's Melodic Rhythms for Guitar. The premise here is learning all of the common rhythmic combinations of basic note values - whole notes, half, quarter, eighths, and triplets - there are both isolated studies of each rhythm and etudes that make use of them.
Last, see if you can get together with other players and read through tunes or whatever. If you're in a large enough pool of guitar players to find a reading group it's a great way to share your pain and progress.
My 4 and 1/2 cents (adjusted for inflation).
William Leavitt has authored some useful material for sight reading practice:
Robert Benedict is also useful for instruction, with a Classical Guitar framework:
What isnoreyoudrive and landonllama have said is correct. For now you've got to take those charts home and woodshed the crap out of them. Reading music on guitar can be super frustrating at first but it's better that you learn to do it now rather than later.
I recommend you get a copy of a book called Melodic Rhythms for Guitar by Wm. Leavitt. and start practicing from it daily. It's going to sound obvious but the only way you improve is to practice daily for a period of at least a few months, but realistically for the next couple of years to get it solidified. Even as little as 15 minutes daily will go a long way towards that goal of being able to read fluently. Also, when learning the rhythm groups and studies in the Leavitt book (or any other music you're learning) it's super important to count the rhythms. Do this as slowly as you have to - it doesn't even need to be in time at this point - just plug away while audibly saying the rhythms, such as "one and two, three and four" for two 8th notes, a quarter note, two more 8th notes, a quarter note, etc. If this is confusing talk to your band director or a good reader in your jazz band to help you with it.
David Oakes' book on Sight Reading for Guitar is a decent one for learning how to sight-read if you're a beginner:
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Reading-Guitar-Complete-Method/dp/0793581885/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466625720&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=David+Oates+sight+reading
If you get through that one, try out William Leavitt's Melodic Rhythms for Guitar. This one is really solid:
https://www.amazon.com/Melodic-Rhythms-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013327/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466625895&sr=1-5&keywords=William+Leavitt
I've not looked through this one, but if you're interested in combining classical guitar and sight reading, it might be worth a shot:
https://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_15?ie=UTF8&dpID=514XaC6KshL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR103%2C135_&psc=1&refRID=0E43T3ND9D1TG4KDPZVE
Good luck!
I would suggest you print out blank sheet music and put dots all over it don't worry at all about what it's going to sound like in fact the worse it sounds the better. Don't worry about rhythms at this point. Now play the "wild notes" that you made over and over again everyday, when your comfortable with it, play it backwards make sure to use all the different keys and all of the neck positions this will familiarize you with all of the notes on your fretboard. The next step is to buy this book. It will teach you any rhythm that you will need to play, use a metronome to practice. You can work on your jazz band piece while you do this reading a piece is like anything, it's mostly about practice.
The GuitarCardio tip is golden. It's really good at getting you away from a plateau because of the random nature of the exercises. So, I'd definitely recommend that. It'll give you a really wild variety of things to do.
Other people mentioned a lot of great videos/books, too, but the one that helped me a lot (not a natural musician by far), is Melodic Rhythms for Guitar:
http://www.amazon.com/Melodic-Rhythms-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375977326&sr=8-1&keywords=MELODIC+RHYTHMS+FOR+GUITAR
It's useful both for learning to read music and getting used to offbeat timing, both of which I had problems with. Doing exercises from it to a metronome is great.
sorry for the late reply! well nearly all books will have some rhythm learning which is excellent. [Berklee's A Modern Method for Guitar - Volumes 1, 2, 3 Complete] (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410004474&sr=8-1&keywords=Berklee%27s+Modern+Method+for+Guitar+123) By William Leavitt
as for more books focused on rhythm some good ones are:
[Rhythm Guitar: The Complete Guide] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhythm-Guitar-The-Complete-Guide/dp/0793581842) by Bruce Buckingham and Melodic Rhythms For Guitar