Did Rhythm Come Naturally To You?

[Winspear]

I've been thinking about this topic recently as it's quite interesting to me. Since being a member of several music groups online, I've noticed now and then questions which surprise me. Questions along the lines of "How do I count this rhythm? I'm having trouble picking up this rhythm in this song".
I did not have a musical upbringing at all and just owned a handful of chart pop CDs until my early teens when I suddenly got into metal at the same time as taking up guitar. I've downloaded tabs all that time, played along with tracks, messed about programming drums and composing and recording music etc for around a decade before actually starting to study music properly. I really don't want to sound like an ass or anything, but it made me realise I've never really had to think about rhythm at all. For me it's always been the case that if I know a song to listen to and want to learn it, all I need to see are the notes. The rhythm is there above the tab so I guess I do read it to an extent, but it's really not necessary for me. On the other hand, developing a good harmonic ear for figuring out parts has been really difficult.
Unless the song has a rhythm part of which I really cannot grasp the groove at all as a listener (very rare, only on parts where the artist is deliberately trying to play nonsense), I've never had to sit down and try and figure out how to read, play, and memorize a rhythm. I just listen to the song. Writing rhythms has always been very natural too. Like I said, I didn't have a musical upbringing (as opposed to some people that you expect to have amazing rhythm having grown up being exposed to funk and such from a young age). I'd also consider my timing accuracy as a performer mediocre, but a natural feeling of rhythm has always been there as far as I am aware.
I don't tend to count anything unless transcribing, and would probably have to think for a second to know how to do so - I just..know how it's meant to sound. It just surprises me when I see somebody trying to figure out how to count what I'd consider a basic syncopated breakdown riff or something like that so that they can play it. I kind of assume that they know the breakdown as a listener so find it strange if they can't just play it. Is it the case that as a listener they actually aren't following the syncopation and do not know how it goes - perhaps just grooving along to the 1/4 count instead?
I'm very interested to hear what you all think and which things did or didn't come naturally to you as a musician.

 

[fantom]

You pretty much described... me... Are you spying on me or something?

I also had a natural "knack" for rhythm. I programmed drums and wrote tabs and never really needed to read the rhythm part if I could hear it.


The curse: I'm also a perfectionist. So when I write a guitar part and program some drum ideas, it drives me absolutely crazy when a drummer isn't "tight" and gets the rhythm "wrong". Sometimes they just dont hear it the same way. Other times they to make the parts more technical or compilcated than needed (adding extra accents that don't mesh with the guitar parts).

That being said, trying to play bass parts has been an eye opener. As someone usually driving the syncopation, playing bass really made me focus on what the drummer was doing instead. And sometimes it is not as natural sounding when notes get added.

 

[Soya]

I always had a knack for understanding rhythm. Started playing drums when I was 18, guitar also at that time though guitar was much more difficult to progress with. But because of the drums background, any kind of tricky or complex guitar rhythm was easy to "pick" up.

 

[Avedas]

My dad's a jazz drummer and I started playing with him and his friends when I was a kid. I don't think poor rhythm was ever an option.

 

[iamaom]

I always assumed I had natural rhythm and didn't have to count the beats or practice with a metronome except in weird time signatures. Then I played with other people. I was wrong.

 

[wannabguitarist]

I always assumed I had natural rhythm and didn't have to count the beats or practice with a metronome except in weird time signatures. Then I played with other people. I was wrong.

Yep, this is me

 

[chipchappy]

I always assumed I had natural rhythm and didn't have to count the beats or practice with a metronome except in weird time signatures. Then I played with other people. I was wrong.

Troof. I feel like I lived in a fishbowl for a while and thought I developed my playing ability pretty far until I jammed with other kids in my hs and realized I sucked ass. Probably because I jammed with kids like:

My dad's a jazz drummer and I started playing with him and his friends when I was a kid. I don't think poor rhythm was ever an option.

^ That dude

 

[Mathemagician]

No. Noooo. Nononono. I have never had rhythm. And I practiced for years without a metronome. I started to use one AFTER I was in my 20’s and playing considerably less than I did as a teen. And my playing has improved drastically. And I struggle with making sure every note is in line. Currently I have most metal tabs at around 80% speed.

I have a LOT of work to do just to get it to decent. And figuring out my OWN rhythms is tough. Luckily everything I seem to write seems to be in 4/4. The way Punk Jesus intended.

 

[Carrion Rocket]

I thought I had a natural sense of rhythm until I played with someone else for the first time. The problem I had, well, have is that I speed up while playing. I've always had a better pick hand than fret hand and find myself out pacing the latter.

 

[KailM]

To this day I don't know wtf people are talking about when they speak about time signatures, subdivisions and what have you.

I took a musical composition class in college (and it was the full extent of my formal theory training). I sort of understood it rudimentarily-- but when I had to compose a piano piece and play it in front of the class -- the professor said "That sounded great, but you didn't play the song you wrote."

I had to dumb down my songwriting just to write something correctly. At the end of the class we had to compose an original piece on any instrument of our choosing, and only had to share the key it was in.

I wrote and played a 5-minute thrash/power metal song at about 200 bpm.

Prof was like "damn, you DO understand rhythm after all."

It has to be in my head -- and then it's either on or it's not. The same goes for melody and chords. Once I know the song, I don't understand needing to read something off a piece of paper.

 

[prlgmnr]

SOME rhythms come naturally to me, especially breakbeat/drum and bass sort of stuff, but I have a constant fight on not to just let myself only play the stuff that comes easily to me.

That's on the drums anyway, on guitar I do struggle a bit when it comes to, say, the bridge part of Unchained or Meshuggah or in lead terms things like Eric Johnson where it's fast but also has idiosyncratic timing and placement of accents.

With Unchained I had to print out the tab and write the timings on until I could count it, with Meshuggah that approach is worthless and as yet I've not found a solution beyond trying to break it up into phrases.

 

[Seybsnilksz]

I've had it easy with both rhythm and melody. I guess I got used to unconventional time signatures in a sense because I listened to Rush at an early age. I also have very good relative pitch. Unless something is very complicated, I can "get" things very easily.

I remember playing in a short lived band with a drummer that has a Youtube channel where he plays all kinds of Dream Theater and some Periphery and stuff. We were playing a song that our band was writing in our rehearsal space, and one part was in 3/4 with a fairly simple kick/snare pattern. Then it switched to the same thing but with a faster double kick pattern, and he always somehow lowered the tempo. The double bass speed wasn't an issue, so I was baffeled that he had to play it through many times to be able to not lower the tempo at that part.

 

[Fathand]

Picking up rhythm is easy, finding the correct groove is difficult.

 

[cwhitey2]

I just..know how it's meant to sound. It just surprises me when I see somebody trying to figure out how to count what I'd consider a basic syncopated breakdown riff or something like that so that they can play it.

This. Not that I'm the greatest guitarist or anything, but I never count out anything. Maybe if I'm describing it to my drummer, but he usually has things covered


I think it just comes naturally to some people. Kind of like how I can't sweep pick but I have been practicing for 6 years

 

[Stilicho]

I always assumed I had natural rhythm and didn't have to count the beats or practice with a metronome except in weird time signatures. Then I played with other people. I was wrong.

This. Even if you're playing with other people you might be able to get by if you have a sympathetic drummer; but if you start trying to double-track things by yourself using a metronome you'll be humbled. Especially when the tempo goes up.

 

[Winspear]

Interesting responses so far! I can definitely appreciate how different things come naturally to different people. I wonder if that's down to specific areas of the brain or anything. I have some friends that just have an absolute breeze with technique on the instrument too, blazing clean alternate picking without ever having to woodshed it much and such. And here I am stuck around 100bpm for years on end
A few people have mentioned about metronome accuracy/playing with others and such. That's what I meant when I said I'd consider my timing mediocre as a performer (I do lots of recording and am still pretty bad at being exactly on the beat) - but grasping the rhythm itself has always been a non-issue for me.

 

[TedEH]

Rhythm I think is just very intuitive to a lot of people. It actually strikes me as really weird when I see someone who plays music but doesn't grasp timing and rhythm as intuitively as I always did. It just feels so fundamental to what music is. Like when someone can't play to a metronome even at low/reasonable speeds, or can't record to a click, or can't play certain songs or parts without counting it out- it's strange to me because I didn't have to "learn" these things, I just do it. It's intuitive. It's fundamental.

One of the first proper bands I played in had a guitarist who had a great sense of melody and could follow a drummer easily enough, and I had a lot of respect for that. But when it came time to record, I was baffled that he couldn't play in time to a click or to a recorded drum track. I had to record all the guitar parts for him.

Later on, at some point I was in a band that lost it's drummer, but we still wanted to keep jamming, so I switched to drums and we jammed with no bass until we found a new guy. But I'm not a drummer. I mean, I knew *how* in theory, but until then I hadn't ever owned a real kit or took it seriously. It took all of a couple of jams to realize I could do it intuitively as well. I just picked it up and ran with it and was able to get through our full set within a couple of jams.

A lot of the musicians I end up jamming with often, the ones I sort of "click" with really well seem to be the ones who play music in an intuitive way as well - learning and playing by ear instead of tabs, rhythm that comes naturally, etc. It took me a good while to realize that these weren't just inherent human ways to experience music- that not everyone quite hears the same thing, or interprets or internalizes music the same way. My brain does backflips whenever someone makes a comment about how they can't distinguish the sound of different drums and things like that. Reminds me of a conversation with a coworker who asked
"why does that one thing sound like a piece of wood hitting something"?
"You mean the snare...?"
"I don't know what it's called - that constant WHACK WHACK WHACK sound in the middle of everything."
"That literally IS a piece of wood hitting something."
"Oh. I guess so."
"Yeah that's a snare drum."
"I still don't know what that means."

 

[GunpointMetal]

I've always been pretty in sync rhythmically. 99% of my music starts with a rhythm pattern and notes get added after the fact when I'm figuring out how it "feels". I pretty much do the same thing where I'm not worried about counting things out until I need to map them in the DAW or tab stuff for the bass player. I guess that's how I end up with riffs with measures of 23/16 and other such nonsense.

 

[Ebony]

As naturally as it can come until you begin to use a metronome and realize your time-keeping is utter shit and you have to practice it for countless hours to be remotely in sync.

Despite that, I do agree with the notion of how some people are more rhythmically inclined than others.

 

[Element0s]

Nah, not me. Reading notation came pretty smoothly and I could certain read rhythms and figure them out in a more mathematical way but my internal clock ain't so hot in general. I'm probably better now that I used to be but it ain't my strongest suit.