How to practice keeping beat?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all a very important aspect in music. 

Let’s get into it.

So what is keeping the beat

In short, it’s the ability to keep the steady pulse that’s within a song. 

In long, we need to keep beat in order to tell us the rhythm that we need to play. 

The rhythm is telling us how long or how short you need to hold out a note. Or when to play a note or how to play the note. 

That’s what rhythm is. 

What the beat does, is it gives us a reference point in the song to tell us where and when to play the next note. 

So now that we know that the beat is important, let’s talk about how to practice keeping it. 

Start with your favorite easy songs

So what happens is that it’s actually pretty difficult to keep beat when listening to complex music. Because what you’ll find is that the drums will coincide with the beat a lot but it’s not the beat every time. 

Like Right now, I’m listening to a song where the drums are keeping most of the beat but the snare does this fast 16th note run close to the end of the 8 bar stanza.

That’s not keeping beat and you could get confused when listening to music and trying to keep beat because honestly, there are so many rhythmic elements that sound like they could be the beat but they’re not. 

So when you first start keeping beat, try and find an easy song to keep beat to, like maybe happy birthday or row row your boat. 

When you feel up to the challenge get a hip-hop song and try and keep beat there, Hip-hop songs are very rhythmically diverse so you’ll be able to keep beat while listening to a whole bunch of different elements going on at the same time. 

Now here are some tips that you should follow.

Remember that sometimes the beat is “Invisible”

So what happens is that this happens more often than not but the beat will not be able to be heard.

When the song is resting and the instruments are all off beat, those things can happen and still sound good but that’s because they’re keeping beat. 

So when you first start out keeping beat, listen to the song, and follow along with the beat and when you hear the instruments resting in the middle of the song, just know that the same steady beat that you were nodding your head to, is still going on it’s just that it’s not able to be heard because they don’t want you to hear it. 

But what you do right there is you keep nodding your head to the same steady beat that you were listening to even though it cuts off. 

How to physically keep beat?

There are two main ways that you’re supposed to physically keep beat. 

One is to nod your head to the beat, that’s a lot of fun and leads to head banging. 

Be careful when you are doing that though because sometimes you lose the beat doing this manner, and also it can hurt your head.

The second way is to tap your foot to the beat.

This is usually the best way to keep beat. However you won’t look like a rockstar doing this. 

And sometimes when you’re playing the guitar, tapping our foot to the beat can get in the way of actually performing the guitar correctly. 

If you follow these tips, then you will be well on your way to gaining your beat touch.

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I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!