Rhythm

One of the things that makes music sound good - instead of like a random collection of noises - is rhythm. Everything in music follows a beat whether it's a fast beat or a slow beat, it's what holds a song together.

When you first learn to play stuff on the guitar you want a nice steady beat. The tick of a clock is a steady beat, because each tick lasts the same length of time. It means that you know exactly when you'll hear the next tick. If it didn't come at just the right time it would sound wrong.

It isn't as easy as it sounds to play a steady beat on the guitar, but it isn't difficult to learn if you count along as you play. Choose a chord or a note on the guitar and each time you play it that will be a beat. Play it over and over again as steadily as you can, at a speed you're comfortable with. As you play, try to count the beats. When you get to four go back to one and start over again like this:

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 ... etc

Each time you count from one to four is called a bar. If you were going to play one bar of A Major you would strum the chord four times. If you were playing two bars you would strum eight times by counting to four twice. When you go from one bar to the next there should be no pause at all, the rhythm should stay exactly the same as all the other beats.

For most songs there are 4 beats in each bar, but a lot of songs have 3 beats instead and so you would count like this ...

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2 ... etc

A song can have any number of beats per bar, but most often it'll be 3 or 4 and won't change for the whole length of the song.

Counting might not seem important at this stage, after all it doesn't make much difference if the beat is steady and doesn't change, but often you'll find you want to learn something which has a slightly more complicated beat and that's when counting becomes essential.

It's best to count out loud if you possibly can, even if it makes you feel like a twat, but if you just can't do it counting along silently in your head is also very useful even if it isn't quite as effective.