II. Rhythm // FEB 24th

Alright, here we go, my friends! 😀 ♪♩ ♪ ♫ ♬


Scroll below for an explanation of this week's assignments! ↓


In this thread, we will be talking about the second lesson of our music reading course. Please use this thread if you have any questions concerning the workbook (coming soon!) or general questions concerning pitch in standard music notation!

 

Click here to access Session 2: Rhythm // Feb 24th (11am PST, 2pm EST, 8pm CET)

Find the other sessions here: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Download the second workbook here

Find the assignments on page 19/20 of the workbook!

 

Feel free to only post a selection of the assignments. They are designed to give you options, depending on how much time you have.

 

  • Exercises 2c and 2d: Can be done without a guitar! Feel free to just clap on a table.
  • Exercise 2g: Can be done without reading all the notes in all the chords! If the pitches are too hard to read, feel free to cover the strings with your left hand and just strum the pattern. Whether you strum up or down is entirely your choice!
  • Exercise 2a: Parallel voices. Also good for practicing reading pitches you learned last week!
  • Exercise 2f: Parallel voices, but difficult. Use this one to challenge yourself to do a bit more than just read basic rhythms. This is an excerpt from JS Bach's music!
  • Exercise 2e: Dotted rhythms! Use this beautiful Dvorak excerpt to challenge yourself to play some dotted eighth notes. 
  • Exercise 2b: Triplets! Use this to practice some basic triplets
  • Exercise 2h: This is the hardest exercise, as it combines triplets, dotted notes, and parallel voices. Use this one to challenge yourself to mix everything we learned!

I will post the answers to the questionnaire on Mar 3rd! 

Submit your assignments by replying to this thread!

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    • MirceaTeam
    • Head of Guitar
    • Mircea
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Here are the answers to last week's questionnaire:

    1. What does a flat do? It lowers a note by one half step ("semitone")
    2. How many frets are in a whole tone? Two. One semitone per fret = two frets.
    3. Within the same octave, which is higher: F sharp or E? F sharp
    4. What song was that in Exercise 1e? Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
    Like
  • Hi Mircea

    Thanks for posting the workbook. However, I could not find any assignments there. Am I missing something? 

    All the best

    José

    Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      José Espírito Santo hi Jose! Sorry about this. I've uploaded a new version of the workbook that explains more clearly where the assignments are. They can be found on page 19 and 20 of the new workbook. Feel free to pick and choose a couple of those to upload into the forums!

      Like
    • Hi Mircea 

      How was the concert? No worries, I’m enjoying a lot the course. Still didn’t upload anything because I’m preety busy this week (teaching). Hope to do it during the weekend.

       

      All the best and many thanks for your excellent work!

      José

      Like 1
    • Ops... pretty, not preety. This iPad typing is killing me!... By the way, you mentioned Musescore and I use it on the laptop. On the iPad I use Notion. It has handwritting recognition and fantastic samples!

      Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      José Espírito Santo No worries Jose! Thanks for uploading later (will comment on the recordings in just a bit!) The concert was great, thank you so much for asking! So much fun to play for a real-life audience again, even at 30% capacity! 😎 incredible.

      Like
    • Brooke
    • Brooke
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I am trying to notate my compositional  work and I find this content to be critical to working with any software and assigning correct note values.   Thanks!!!!

    Like 1
      • Brooke
      • Brooke
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Brooke and rest note values as well.

      Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Brooke wonderful! Thank you so much, Brooke! Very happy to hear this.

      Like
    • Marek Tabisznull
    • retired guitar teacher
    • Marek_Tabisz
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    The way you translate the intricacies of musical notation makes me regret being retired. Surely, throughout my teaching career, I could have explained these complexities a lot better.

    Like 2
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Marek Tabisz Thank you so much, Marek!

      Like 1
  • Enjoyed the live class and I do like the fact that I can watch it again.  I get so frustrated with parts of reading rhythm, but the class helped me a lot. Still confused on one bar in exercise 2c. The last bar. You will see it in my video.  

     

    Here is a link to my efforts at the exercises.  Looking back you can see frustration - but I guess thats all part and parcel of being a student of the classical guitar - no matter what your level!

    https://youtu.be/mYe9jA9denQ

    Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      JOHN ANDERSON John, this is great!!! Thank you so much for posting these in - I didn't expect anyone to do all 8 exercises, and you did not only that; I also loved how much care and attention you gave them all. 

      Wonderful job all around! Here are a couple of comments on the individual exercises:

      • a: Beautiful tone and great job playing everything really well! Rhythm-wise very good too, just speeding up a liiittle bit towards the end of the phrase there. Well done though!
      • b: Same here! Well done. I think you might be introducing a very slight rest before the chords though. This is probably because your triplet on beat 2 is a bit fast. You are playing together with the metronome on every beat, but since the triplet is just a bit rushed, you end up having to wait extra before the next beat. Another quick note: on the second chord, I think you might be playing a D minor (D A D F) instead of the half diminished chord there (D A B F)
      • c: Last measure: you got it in the end!!! Wonderful. The syncopation is what caused you trouble the other times: the fact that in the first half of the bar, your notes must come on ONE AND two AND. But you got it, it sounded perfect on the last try!
      • d: Careful with measures 4 and 5 - the rhythm got just a bit wonky there (where you played the 8th-16th-16th group and the 16th-16th-8th.)
      • e: On the first try, some of the dotted notes were a bit uneven, but it worked much better on the second try! This one is a particularly tricky one, because you have to not only maintain the dotted rhythms throughout, but also play all the right notes in order, and they tend to repeat in somewhat unexpected ways.
      • f: This was was absolutely perfect on the second try! 🎉 Congratulations!
      • g: The very first note (low A) was a biiit short, but this one was also perfect otherwise!
      • h: The triplet was also a bit fast, but otherwise you got it on the last try!

      Once again amazing job, and thanks for sending these in!!! Hope you've enjoyed my comments.

      Like
    • Mircea Thank you so much for taking the time to not only view my submission but also the detailed feedback. I will study your points carefully. This is fantastic once again thank you. Looking forward to tonight live session.  The football can go on hold!

      Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      JOHN ANDERSON wonderful, so glad to hear!!! See you around the forums and in the live session!

      Like
  • Hi Mircea

    I regret to say that I was unable to attend the live session in its entirety owing to time constraints. I watched the recording and thoroughly enjoyed your overview of rhythm notations particularly the part about dotted notes and ties.

    I have shared here my part of the assignments viz Ex 2a and Ex 2h. I know it is not perfect and there are a lot of mistakes. This is the best I could manage within the hectic schedule that I have been running of late. 

    Please share your valuable feedback on it. I may post a few more videos of the other exercises tomorrow.

      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      BHASKAR so happy to hear you've enjoyed the livestream! And thank you for sending in the submissions - great job!

      On 2a: This one is hard, with all the parallel voices - and yet you make it work!

      Rhythm-wise, make sure you don't slow down as you change between chords. It's important to keep in mind that there is no minimum tempo at which you should play this! So if changing between chords still requires some time to think (which is absolutely normal), you could try to simply start slower. Once you are playing slowly enough to be comfortable with the chord change, gradually and carefully raise the tempo of the entire exercise at the same time.

      On 2h: Great job! Given that it's only half a bar though, I can't quite tell you much yet. That being said, what you played was rhythmically correct!

      This is technically off-topic, but it's good to get into the habit of regularly tuning your guitar before you start practicing, so that you strings get "used" to the right tension and your ears get used to the correct pitches. Check this one out for a free option!

      Like
    • Mircea 

      Well, Mircea, the problem was that the videos I made were much bigger in size and were impossible to upload in the comments thread. So I had to reduce the size of the videos and in that process half of the original video got cut. In fact the complete video had me practicing the entire bars.

      I will make sure to make a full video of the exercises and try to post it here.

      Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      BHASKAR Oh I'm sorry to hear that! What you could do to get around the file size limit in the forums is to simply upload the videos as unlisted to YouTube.

      You can then either simply paste the link to your video in your reply!

      Alternatively, once you have them as unlisted on YouTube, you can also click the video button below the text box you write your reply in and paste the link there. Hope this helps!

      Like
  • Hi Mircea,

    Here are my attempts at 2a, b, c, and d.  I couldn't quite handle the numerous notes, so I did it the easy way.  I hope that's okay.  (I'm not sure what I did wrong when I tried to upload, but I think you'll have to copy-paste the link.  Please let me know if you can't access these and I'll try something different.)

    https://youtu.be/iskIg1VRTQo

    https://youtu.be/NIXYYYtLbpU

    https://youtu.be/hEW3TNphZM8

    https://youtu.be/Nxq0_f97vGQ

    Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Desi Husband Desi, these were just wonderful!! Thank you for posting these and congratulations on the amazing job you did with this! I am very proud of you and very happy to see and listen to these.

      Here are my small comments on each one of them:

      • 2a: Great job maintaining the rhythm! Good call taking off one of the voices to focus on a steady tempo and correct pitches - it worked wonders!
      • 2b: Perfect rhythm!!! Wonderful job. You got it! 🎉
      • 2c: Pretty much perfect!!! If looking at it with what I would call an absolute "microscope", I would be able to tell you that the note at measure 4, beat 2 was a bit long. The same happens with the syncopated note in beat 5, but to an even more imperceptible degree. It's truly just nitpicking at this point, it sounded great and the whole thing was pretty much perfectly in time.
      • 2d: And once again, ending on a strong note - pretty much perfect here, too! Wonderful job! 🎉

      Congratulations on everything and hope to see you around this forum the next couple of weeks!

      Like 1
    • Mircea Thank you!  After watching session III today, I would like a class where we just get to sit and listen to you play.  😊  You have an awesome way with the guitar!!! 

      Like 1
      • MirceaTeam
      • Head of Guitar
      • Mircea
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Desi Husband Thank you so much, Desi! I actually played a concert together with tonebase head of piano Ben Laude a couple of weeks ago - unfortunately though, since it was a collaboration with an event streaming platform, it's not available to view after the fact (the way our videos are.) Here's hoping there will be many more in the future, perhaps on our own platform too!

      Like 1
    • Mircea I will keep an eye out for your concerts!!!

      Like 1
  • I guess my downloads worked after all.  🙂

    Like 1
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