How can you transition from playing pre-composed crossrhythm exercises to improvising with crossrhythms over chord changes? Here I show you rhythmic templates, which can provide a good transition.
The Rhythm Book series is at therhythmbooks.com. Here, you can find descriptions, previews, and pricing.
1-Minute rhythm video series: Every week, see a new video each day:
Mondays: Basics of rhythm, including keeping good time, count-offs, relationship to the beat, listening, phrasing, and rhythmic feels and styles
Tuesdays: Rhythmic notation - transcribing and sight-reading rhythms - starting from the basic
Wednesdays: Crossrhythms!
Thursdays: Rhythm for guitarists. How to apply rhythmic ideas on guitar. We'll start out with basics, and get to advanced material later in the series.
Fridays: Odd meters and changing meters!
Saturdays: Advanced rhythmic concepts and practices, including superimposition and subdivision, metric modulation and feel modulation, and transformational analogues.
Sundays: Rhythmic development -- all about how to develop musical ideas rhythmically (in improvising and in composing)
If you are interested in lessons from the author in rhythm, or in improvisation, harmony, arranging, guitar, or composing, contact Rory Stuart at: rory [[remove spaces]] lessons [[at sign]] gmail [[dot]] com. However, for rhythm, your best value for the money is certainly to start out working from the books.
Note to those outside the USA: international postage is expensive, but the books are very reasonably priced and, with more than 2,000 supporting mp3s online, as well as worksheets, etc…, getting the 6-volume set (or the 4-volume set for those who have already totally mastered notation) is still a good value. However, if you can pool your order with others in your area who want to get copies, the postage cost per book on international orders drops dramatically when more books are shipped together.
Want to work with the books without purchasing them? Consider requesting that your local library get a set of them. There is simply no other set of reference books on rhythm like these, which, in the words of NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman “will be required reading in the field, setting the standard for future research on rhythm" and about which Christian Salfellner, Professor of Rhythm, University of Musik, Graz, Austria wrote "I think these are the best rhythm books I’ve ever seen. These books will become a standard; they are so detailed and well thought out…”
Cinematography(?) by Rory Stuart
