Any female guitarists here?

BossArky

I'm currently teaching my girlfriend to play acoustic. Had to get a 3/4 size spanish guitar for her cos she is small and hands couldn't cope with steel strings.

Have been at it for approx the past 15 months, only about 1 hour per week which isn't enough I know... but she is making progress.. can strum the usual chords and now can bumble through the major and minor scales.

The one prob is... how do I teach her rhythm? Anything except for a standard 1 and 2 and 3 4, .. or 1 2 3 and 4 ... etc... seems to confuse her. She is not thick... and I know she'll get there in a while... but I want to speed up the process.

i.e. when she is playing with a metronome or a drumbeat she dosen't seem to be able to hear the beat and keep in time.

It wasn't me!

It takes time to drum that idea of beat into your mind.

Stompbox

A female what?

crosstownk

Get her to listen to some real definite 4/4 tunes - Rock is usually good. Tell her to count 1,2,3,4 as she listens - it might help her get into the groove - so to speak.

Kivun Sotilas

BossArky wrote:

I'm currently teaching my girlfriend to play acoustic. Had to get a 3/4 size spanish guitar for her cos she is small and hands couldn't cope with steel strings.

Have been at it for approx the past 15 months, only about 1 hour per week which isn't enough I know... but she is making progress.. can strum the usual chords and now can bumble through the major and minor scales.

The one prob is... how do I teach her rhythm? Anything except for a standard 1 and 2 and 3 4, .. or 1 2 3 and 4 ... etc... seems to confuse her. She is not thick... and I know she'll get there in a while... but I want to speed up the process.

i.e. when she is playing with a metronome or a drumbeat she dosen't seem to be able to hear the beat and keep in time.

I'm a female guitarist but somehow I doubt her having no sense of rhythm has anything to do with being female, mines rather grand! :eek:

Some people just can't feel it or have never even had to think about it so it makes no sense. I once jammed with a guy (he was rather young) who was only used to "playing with himself" and he had absolutely no sense of rhythm. He could not play in time at all with anything but himself.

I set up a metronome and he was unable to play in time with it. Ended up getting rid of him because I am not a guitar teacher... Maybe you can teach her different picking styles, I mean is she only playing down or up and down?

I guess some guitar teachers here will have actual lessons for teaching rhythm.

BossArky

Yeah I suppose it is just down to practice practice practice alright.

From my point of view I was playing music since I was 8, where as my girlfriend just started in her mid 20's so I suppose that is where the problem is coming from.

I did not mean "female's" have no rhythm.... I just don't know of many of my male friends who have successfully thought their girlfriends how to play... and guitar playing in general seems to be 90% male dominated.... like airline pilots.

John

Get anyone (male or female) to just tap along with some nice easy songs before trying to play along. If you can't tap your hand/foot/*insert relevant appendage here* in time to the beat then playing in time to the beat is going to be even more difficult.

leninbenjamin

this is kinda what worked for me, just pick a song that has a relatively complicated rhythm to play and teach her it. and stick with it. it may take ages, into the months, but if she can eventually get something that's a bit challenging down she should have no problem with rhythm.

but it takes more than one hour a week to really progress yourself anyway, it's something she'd have to work on daily.

It wasn't me!

Try Motherman, by Atheist.

steveland?

Get a drumstick and tap her repeatedly on the head with it in rythm.

Or alternatively, since you're already... familiar, you could actually hold her hand and strum it for her in a 1, 2, 3 and 4 rythm or some such until she gets a grasp on it

fitz

I'd suggest getting her to practice playing simple 1,2,3,4 rythmn using all downstrums.

Notate it this way, where '/' represents a downstrum:

/ / / /

And so on...
Once she's got them fairly solid, introduce ands into the rythmn pattern using upstrums, with a '+' to notate:

/ / /+/

Start with the upstrum in place as detailed above, them move it around, then put in more than one, etc.

She's probably concentrating so hard on the physical act of playing that she can't really pay attention to the rythmn of a metronome yet. That kind of thing can take time for some people.
Don't try and mimic a rythmn in a song, it'll lead to poor technique.
Do it this way and you'll build up really strong basic rythmn, which will end up being really beneficial long term.

Good luck with it!

BossArky

Thanks for the advice all.

Yeah she has the basic rhythm i.e. all downstrokes, or all downstrokes with one or two ups in the middle... and could actually fool the casual listener into thinking that she can strum through a few songs ok.

I'm just trying to get her to make the step into being able to play with me, or a metrome, or drumbeat on keyboard.

My plan is to train her up as a rhythm guitarist and then go gigging around London... which I've done also before... but it would allow a bit more variety if I had her there in the background strumming away and looking pretty