9 Rhythm Patterns Beginners Mess Up All the Time

There are nine

rhythm

ic

patterns

that every beginner needs to know to play the piano effectively, but to explain any of them I first have to explain the concept of subdivision, so here we have a measure of four or four very simple quarter notes that are counted as one two three four. and then on the piano, of course, that's just going to be one, two, three, four and now we're going to get into the subdivision, so now we still have our four beats here, they're here one, two, three, four, but because an the eighth note only gets half a beat, now we basically have to fit two notes on each beat and we use the term and it looks like a plus sign, so now instead of one, two, three four, we will be counted one, two and three. and four and I still had my quarter notes counting on my finger and then playing the eighth notes like this, now we're going to break it down even further into 16th note subdivisions and I'm going to explain when you can use 16th notes or 16th notes. eighth note subdivisions in your piece, but here we are dividing each beat into four equal parts, so we still have our beats one, two, three, four and even we still have the second half of each beat here, and so one and two and three and four and so on, now we have to take into account the missing notes because now we are dividing each of them into halves and we use the following term so that we have one e and uh for e and uh three E and A for e and uh so instead of one and two and three and four and now it's an E and A two e and a three e and a four e and uh you still have to keep up with one two three four but now We're just putting four instead of three, so, When should you use sixteenth note subdivision versus eighth note subdivision?

Well, here is the answer. Everyone asked me this. If you have any sixteenth notes in your song, it may be a sixteenth note rest somewhere. in the middle you have to subdivide 16th notes all the

time

, even if you have quarter notes because what that will do is ensure that you're playing consistently throughout and then when you finally get to that measure with 16th notes, it's not going to be very jarring to move around. just by counting flat quarter notes to sixteenth notes and vice versa. If you don't have sixteenth notes in your music, maybe just eighth notes, you can probably get away with using eighth note subdivision talking about eighth note subdivision here. we have the

rhythm

that I showed you from the beginning, the dotted quarter octave rhythm, which are these two guys and then I added some quarter notes to complete the measure.

Now let me show you how you're going to count this so that the The first question I have for you is how many beats does a dotted quarter note have and you probably know that it has one and a half beats. So how do we count that? Well, we use our eighth note subdivision as our friend. I have another question for How many halves does a beat and a half have right in the dotted quarter? How many halves are there in a

time

and a half? So to answer this question, I drew our eighth note subdivisions in the bass clef so we can compare them and the answer to that question is three right three halves of a year and a half because you have one half you have another half which makes a whole and then another half to form a year and a half remember that each eighth note only occupied half a beat, so this dotted fourth note is going to occupy this eighth note because it is half a beat, it is going to occupy this eighth note which is another half of the time and it's actually going to occupy this eighth note which is another half of the time, so this is going to count as one and two and then you move again on the and of two, then one and two and then, of course, would you count three 4's or, well, no, you want to count your subdivision of eighth notes here, you should actually move them so they're lined up because that will help you count more accurately and consistently, so this rhythm is one, two, three, and four , so ask yourself how do you count dotted quarters using sixteenth notes, well, it's pretty simple, okay, so remember that he said that a dotted quarter is one and a half beats long, well, how many of these is it going to take up?

Well, I have some advice for you, it's the best advice of the entire lesson. I'm too serious when notes are transmitted together, that means they equal one. time, so we know it's going to take at least one e Go to the right because that's one time, but we need half a time to the left, so that would also be 2E because this would be the other half of two, which which makes sense because that's where the eighth note is, so you would count one e and two e and three e and four e and remember that you still want to subdivide this B and this rhythm, well, so you can count more accurately, there is an alternative way of count that dotted quarter octave rhythm and we're going to use pineapples, yeah, really, so we're going to use the word pineapple and let me show you how we're going to do this.

You can actually count rhythms by associating certain words. with them and certain syllables within the word, so you can use pineapple with the dotted black one holding the dotted black one for the Pine app and then moving forward pulling like this pineapple cake one and two and three four like that, next we have to talk about the 16th note combo three rhythms, okay, 16, although combo rhythms are when you basically have mixes of 8th notes and 16th notes and there are quite a few that you need to be aware of, so here's our first rhythm, the 8th rhythm 2, 16 , this is what it looks like, now this one is a lot simpler than it looks, we're still using one E and two E and kind of stuff, so here's our eighth note, this is where the confusing part is because they're kind of combined, which by the way I said before if All of these are marked together and they are all connected, which equals one beat, so here we have an e and remember that when you subdivide by sixteenth notes and you have an eighth note, it will actually take up two of those and then you will continue go ahead and you'll come in, so it'll go one e and then of course the rest of the beat would be two e and one three e and one four e and uh, but again it's one e and uh, I always like that. internalize these rhythms as well, um instead of just going an e and letting it go because every rhythm has a certain type of gallop or a certain type of cadence, um, so don't just try to count them or use maybe your pine cones. count them but also internalize the rhythms.

The next rhythm that we just built on top of that now we have two sixteenth notes and an octave in there, we can say they're sixteenth notes because they have a double bar and then you have a bar in there, but all together equal to what is pressed, at least I hope you said that, so now we know we're using an E and A kind of thing, so we have two sixteenth notes, one e and then and uh, it's the opposite of the other one, we did an e and uh, this is an e and o to internalize it a little simpler, so of course playing this whole rhythm would sound like this and because I was subdividing into sixteenth notes the whole time playing these the right amount even though being slower than the other notes wasn't a problem, whereas if I wouldn't have subdivided it I would have had to just guess, okay, we have a new rhythm here, octave or sorry, sixteenth, eighth, sixteenth, you can tell how many flags are in each one. but all together equals one beat, so of course we're using our e Anders now, so on beat one is our 16th note, we go straight to E and note that the eighth note now occupies two of those. syllables because each syllable is worth a quarter of a time, two quarters is half a beat and then you'll move on, so it'll look something like this just playing that over and over again or internalizing it now by playing the whole rhythm. e and uh two e and to three e and four e and uh, next, the dotted sixteenth note, this is the last pattern combined with at least sixteenth notes, so we have our sixteenth note here, the double flag and then we have an eighth note. here, but it has a period, so a dotted eighth note and I'm sure it looks spectacular, there we go and then to join up, it's equal to two beats that no one beat, so now we have to talk about how many beats are in a point . eighth note instead of a dot, remember that the dotted quarter note is one and a half, so how many is a dotted octave?

So if you don't know, let's say we just called drawing as a little example down here, so if you don't know. the dots, the dot will add half the notes value to itself, so the reason a dotted quarter note gets a beat and a half is because it's one plus half a one, which is one and a half, So what about a dotted eighth note? an eighth note is half a correct b and what is half a half a quarter and then you have to use your school math plus a quarter to make them equal, so a dotted octave is this.

I'm sure this is the math. You wanted to see today, it's three quarters of time, so how are we going to count three quarters of time? It's actually very easy to use subdivision, so remember earlier when I was talking about sixteenth notes, one E and A, two E and A. that each of those syllables was equal to a quarter of a time and we need this right here to be equal to three quarters, so it's very simple, it's actually only going to take up one e and because each of them is worth a quarter of a b and you have three. quarters here and then you move on, so this whole measure will be counted as one e and two e and three e and four e and uh or to internalize it, it has a certain kind of cadence like the other one, so you should also try to internalize that and go directly to the triplets.

This is where things get interesting so now we are not splitting into two or four but into three and a lot of people struggle with this especially when going from three to two and I have a little trick here to get you used to that , so let's talk about triplets for a second, so now we're dividing each beat into thirds and this is how we do it, so let's write down our three. or four beats here I better can't count today and this time we're not using y at all because that won't work that's just to count in two equal parts so I use a TR polit a triplet two triplet three triplet four triplet and then I'm just going to playing quarter notes in the left hand a triplet triplet three triplet instead of one and two and it's a triplet two triplet a little faster but three even parts so here I have an alternating rhythm between a triplet and an eighth note a triplet and an eighth note , so just this would be counted as a triplet two and three triplet four, but a lot of students ask me all the time, Tim, I really have trouble going from, you know, triplets, eighth notes and back, fourth, so you'll have to use to your best friend, the metronome, put it on four, four, one, two, three, four and then, in time with the metronome, see if you start with eighth notes, well, two, three, force, go one, two, three and four, now.

Get used to that, try triplets, so move back and forth between those two and then what I want you to do is, oh, so let's make it really interesting, you'll play the One Beat triplet, the next one will be eighth notes. the next beat triplet the next one will be eighth notes is like the rhythm that I gave you here on the sheet, so let's see if we can do it together, so here are our four beats. I always recommend that you go play for a minute. to internalize the rhythm a triplet two and three triplet four and a triplet two and three triplet four and a triplet so as you can see with the metronome we're going from triplets to eighth notes and the metronome was actually holding each of those beats for us like this which I could switch between triplets and eighth notes, triplets and eighth notes and by using the metronome I could also hear when I was getting a little weaker and then I could go back and make it stronger, so what I recommend you do at home is actually just use the metronome and do what we just did by alternating between 8th triplets 8th triplets so that over time you can internalize what this sounds like it also has an internalization pattern so you can remember it much more easily now If you are very unlucky, you will have seen quarter note triplets, so How do you count these?

I'm going to be honest, you won't see them much in your music, but there's a chance you will. now I have three quarter notes under our triplet, which is a quarter note triplet and the question is how many beats is this going to take. I want to give you a little hint about the amount of value that The triplet takes up is always like double, whatever the value of the note underneath it, so if they're quarter notes, you're not going to add them together. If it is a quarter note, the total amount of beats that the three are going to occupy together is a half note just like with the eighth note triplets which were three eighth notes together, not really, but in this case they really took the value of the next node, which was the quarter note, so if you have quarter note triplets, it takes up to a half note, so to count this we're actually going to count two beats of a triplet, two triplets, we're using the same thing but it works slightly different, so which we count in 1 triplet, two triplets, except instead of each one.

Of the notes in the triplet only take up one syllable, they will take up two syllables, so this gets a little complicated, but you'll get the hang of it, so instead of one triplet, two triplets, it's one triplet, two triplets. I know it sounds. a little unpleasant but you'll get used to it a split trip two triplet one triplet two triplet let me show you on the pianowait a triplet two triplet and then three and four and I'll probably use a metronome to make sure I'm getting into the fourths a little bit, but this is how you do it, you only say one, you would do two triplet beats but only two syllables on each, Now I have another type of combined rhythm. combo Rhythm for you right now um this is rest 16.

Notes 16. This is very easy to count because rest 16 only gets a quarter beat like a sixteenth note does so we're still using our e and uh except We're not playing on beat one, so it's going to be an eight and an e and two e and three and four eight and one e and so you want to plan your attack on e instead of that rhythm so I'd like to tap my foot and then move on. to the next note, which is a little bit simpler, the opposite of that is 3 16 frets 16, sixteenth rest, so you would go one e and then nothing, so one e and one e and uh two e and uh playing the whole rite one e and uh two e and a three and a four e and then we have ties another one that a lot of students ask me about, so we have four quarter notes here very simple, but um we should probably still be subdivided into eighth notes, why do you think that's okay?

It's so we can count more accurately, because the longer you hold the notes the longer your brain will have to guess, this is very simple, normally it would be counted as one. and two and three and four and but this time we have a tie, a tie on beats, so this black note here tied to the other black note will not only occupy two and it will occupy three and two, it is almost like a half note now you may be wondering why would you put it why wouldn't you put a half note in there that's a very good question well, there are other uses for loops, as we'll find out in a minute, but this That's how we're going to play this rhythm, so it's going to go one and two and three and four and now this is where the loops really come into play, so here we have beats one, two, three.

I guess we'll just put it there, why not four? and now we're joining time four or four and rather with one, so all of these will be joined into a single beat or a single uh remnant, so that's why you would need a tie in one instance because I can't draw a half note, it won't, seriously, it won't let me do it, but you can't draw a half note between bars, so all of this would be counted as one, two, three, four and one. and two and three and four and keep in mind that I held the four and didn't press that note again during and as our ninth rhythm pattern at the end, I actually have a very special tip for you, it's really very useful when counting rhythms. precisely, but before that I want you to leave an answer in the comments because I have a question for you, what rhythm

patterns

are you having trouble with?

More specifically, are there any rhythm patterns we didn't talk about today that you probably have trouble with? I'll be surprised to see your suggestion appear in a future video where I might do a part two of this talking about which I promise you I have a special technique and I won't let you down, you have to watch this video to learn about it. I called the point of attack strategy and it will help you count rhythms with much more precision and with much less frustration, so your piano teacher, Tim, thanks you for coming and I will see you, yes, in the next lesson, have a a great day.