II. Rhythm // FEB 24th

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!

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.

Marek Tabisz Thank you so much, Marek!

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.

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

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!

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!

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!

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!