Boost Your Creativity with Rhythm Mastery Cells
Do you find yourself playing the same strum patterns for everything you play?
Do you struggle to come up with new licks when you solo?
Rhythm Mastery Cells may be the exact thing you need.
In this video, you will learn how to use rhythm to boost your creativity so you never run out of ideas again:
You will learn:
What a Rhythm Mastery Cell is
How to practice them to get the most out of this concept
How to combine cells to unlock endless creative possibilities. This concept is even more valuable if you feel like you don’t have a creative bone in your body.
Follow the simple rhythm guitar playing tips in this video, and you will see an instant improvement in your ability to create your own parts. An added bonus is it will make learning and playing other people's songs and solos easier, too.
Are you sick and tired of struggling with rhythm? Mastering rhythm can instantly improve everything you play and is also one of the most effective tools for being more creative. To finally understand and master rhythm, check out my Ultimate Rhythm Mastery guitar course.
Video Transcription
Do you often feel like your guitar playing sounds stale and boring?
Are you trapped in a cycle of playing the same rhythms over and over again?
Do you find it challenging to create unique strum patterns or licks?
Or is rhythm a puzzle that you're struggling to solve?
Using mastery cells is a unique and innovative approach to working with rhythm that will help you overcome these challenges.
Hi, I'm Brian Fish from musictheoryforguitar.com. Today, I'm excited to show you how Rhythm Mastery Cells can help you transform your rhythm and unlock your creative potential.
So, what exactly is Rhythm Mastery Cell?
It's a one-beat rhythm that you practice in isolation. Now, on its own, that might not sound like much. The magic happens, and the true creative potential of this concept is unleashed once you have more than one mastery cell to work with.
Let's dive into this first step of the process and discover the world of possibilities that rhythm mastery cells can open up for you.
Step 1
The first step in this process is to pick a one-beat rhythm we will work with. Today, let's pick a group of four sixteenth notes. Anytime you work with rhythm, there is a process you want to take it through. The process is this.
Can you verbalize the rhythm?
Do you know how to count it? For this rhythm, we will use the Western way of counting (1 e + a).
Can you do that consistently across multiple beats? (1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a)
Once you can say a rhythm, it is much easier to play it on your guitar.
When you can verbalize the rhythm, you can take it to the guitar. Start off playing something very simple, like a single note, a single chord, or using mute strings.
Make sure you can keep this rhythm going. You are looking for consistency. Can you keep a steady rhythm going for around a minute? Once you can do that test to see how accurate your timing is with a metronome. You can also try playing the rhythm at different tempos.
After that, start applying it to the things that you already know. You can make up a chord progression or use one from a song you know. It doesn't matter if it's the correct strum because you are only seeing if you can apply the rhythm you are working with.
Can you play an arpeggiated chord pattern with the rhythm?
Can you create a lead line with this mastery cell?
You want to make sure that you can work with the rhythm in isolation before you move on to step two.
Step 2
Step two looks an awful lot like step one. The only difference here is we want to pick a rhythm. You want to make a subtle change here. Let's take those first two sixteenth notes and replace them with an eighth note. This rhythm has the same pulse, so it will be easy to combine them. When you play this rhythm, do not play anything on the e (1 (e) + a). Take this rhythm through all the same steps we used for the first Rhythm Mastery Cell
Step 3
The next step is to combine those two rhythms that we've worked on in isolation. At first, it may seem like there are only a few ways to combine these rhythms (R1 + R1, R2 + R2, R1 + R2, R2 + R1). A lot of music is played in 4/4. That means there's potential for four different rhythms that we can play within a measure since each mastery cell only takes up one beat. You should think with this formula instead.
2 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 16
We really have 16 potential variations when we work with these two mastery cells.
This concept compounds quickly. When you add a third mastery cell to the formula, we end up with 81 possible rhythms
3 * 3 * 3 * 3 = 81
Add a fourth master cell, and that number jumps to 256.
You don't have to practice every possibility. All you need to do is work on combining each mastery cell, and you can play all of those rhythms.
1 + 1 2 + 1 3+ 1 4 + 1
1 + 2 2 + 2 3 +2 4 + 2
1 + 3 2 + 3 3 + 3 4 + 3
1 + 4 2 + 4 3 + 4 4 + 4
If you can play these combinations, you can play all 256 rhythms. That is a ton of material to use to create strums or licks. And we have not even started to add variations like root notes, ties, and muted notes. There are so many things we can create from these Rhythm Mastery Cells.
If you want to find the master rhythm and learn more creative ways to use it, I recommend you take a look at my course, Ultimate Rhythm Mastery.
Ultimate rhythm mastery is not a book; it is a complete video course that takes you from the basics through advanced rhythms. It covers everything you need to know about rhythms, time signatures, and how to be more creative with those elements of music. You learn how to apply every concept to the guitar. Everything is immediately practical. I guide you through each step of the process and show you how to practice the material to make the most progress. Everything is developed through exercises, so you know how to use it.
Click the link below to learn more: