What is rhythm in music? Learn all about building rhythm skills below
Rhythm is music’s most primal element, the part that makes us want to tap our foot or get up and dance. For listeners, rhythm is a big part of what makes music enjoyable to hear. That’s why a good sense of rhythm is absolutely essential for musicians.
Notes and rhythm need to work together to create a sense of movement, a pulse, a drive. For a beginning piano student, that pulse can be hard to connect to. They might be focusing so hard on getting the right notes that they forget the rhythm and instead type out those notes like they’re typing on a keyboard. When you type, the timing is not important, only the sequence. When you play music, the timing is critical. In this article, I’ll share tips for helping piano students make that crucial connection between notes and rhythm.
Got rhythm? Hoffman Academy Premium offers lots of resources to help piano students learn rhythm in music, like our heartbeat mat, our rhythm words guide, and rhythm composition activity. Discover your piano potential with the world’s best music learning system!
What best describes rhythm in music?
Rhythm is all around us. From the beating of our hearts to the tramp of our own footsteps, from the crash of ocean waves to the calls of birds in a forest, the world is filled with patterns of sound and silence. In music, the timing of notes and rests creates these patterns, which are known as rhythm.
Rhythm in music is usually founded on a beat. The beat forms a steady pulse that keeps the rhythm moving forward. Tempo describes the speed of the beat, whether fast or slow. By varying the tempo of a beat, a piece of music can drive faster to create excitement, or slow down to draw out an emotional moment.
What is the key to a good sense of rhythm?
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At the primal level of rhythm, you’ve got to feel the beat. Feeling the beat is something that should come naturally. Our own hearts give us a constant beat. When you walk, you walk with a steady beat. Finding a connection to this natural sense of beat is the foundation for good rhythm.
Before we go on, I should clarify the difference between beat and rhythm. Beat is the recurring, steady pulse in music. Rhythms are patterns of shorter and longer notes that occur over a beat. Even when you can’t hear the beat, you should feel it there beneath the rhythm.
Finding the inner beat
If I am teaching a student who has lost connection to the beat, I will often trade places with them and say, “let me play the song and you can drum the beat.” I keep a drum in my piano studio, but if you haven’t got a drum handy then go ahead and grab a pot and wooden spoon. Clapping or tapping works, too. As I play and they drum, they experience the music in a new way. They hear music expressed rhythmically in relationship to a steady beat, which they can feel because they are moving their own body to create the beat. If you’re using my video lessons, have your student clap or drum the beat along with me as I play the song.
Once the student can successfully keep the beat while I play, we trade back. They play, and I drum the beat. I stand where they can see and hear me. Seeing the motion of my hand on the drum helps them anticipate the beat. Like magic, this simple activity will usually transform a rhythmically challenged performance into one with accurate rhythms played over a steady beat.
What are the types of rhythm in music?
Rhythm makes music memorable and relatable! Rhythm is what gives music its sense of movement and timing. It refers to patterns of sound and silence and is created by combining different note durations and accents. There are many different types of rhythms in music but some of the most common are regular rhythm, syncopation, polyrhythm, and free rhythm.
Regular rhythm is predictable and loops the same pattern throughout the whole song. It is often heard in pop, rock, classical and dance music. Syncopated rhythms involve placing accents on weak or off-beats, which creates a more complex and unexpected pattern. Syncopation is most often heard in jazz, funk, and Latin music. Polyrhythm occurs when two or more contrasting rhythms are played simultaneously. It can be heard in many genres including classical, jazz, and Latin music. Lastly, free rhythm does not follow a structured pattern, and has no consistent beat or time signature. Free rhythm is often improvised and creates a sense of freedom. This rhythm can be found in some classical pieces, avant-garde, or experimental music.
What is an example of rhythm?
Let’s use a classic nursery rhyme to understand rhythm. Hot Cross Buns uses quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. The song begins with three quarter notes and a rest that go along with the words “Hot Cross Buns.” In the second half of the song, the rhythm picks up with the use of eighth notes when we sing, “One a Penny, Two a Penny.” The different combinations of the quarter notes, eighth notes, and rest are what makes this song easy to learn and remember.
To learn more about the rhythm, check out our Hot Cross Buns rhythmic dictation.
While it’s fun playing rhythms, creating your own rhythm can feel even more satisfying. Watch the video below and I’ll show you how to create your own rhythms!
More rhythm developing activities
Here are some more activities that can help kids develop a sense of rhythm:
Clap along: Play recorded music and have your child clap or march to the beat. Then have them try clapping along with different rhythms. Can you hear different rhythms played by different instruments? Try clapping along with those rhythms, or with a rhythm you make up on your own.
Echoes: You can play this game even with a very young child. Clap, tap or speak a simple rhythm, then your child echoes that rhythm. Give your child a chance to come up with a rhythm and see if you can echo it!
Freeze dance: Play recorded music. Encourage your child to dance to the beat, but let them know they have to freeze when the music pauses. Pause the music at random times.
Heartbeat mat: This is a great teaching tool that will provide many hours of rhythm learning. Hoffman Academy members can download it for free, and it can also be purchased separately. Instructions are included.
When you’re ready to start learning to read rhythms, use the following guides as a handy reference:
How do you know the rhythm of a song?
The most basic way to know the rhythm of a song is to listen to it. Even beginning musicians can learn complex rhythms by ear long before they’re able to read them off of a page. There are some genres of music for which it’s almost impossible to write down the exact rhythm as it’s performed, such as jazz and pop. To learn the rhythm of a song by ear, follow these steps:
- Listen to the song a few times.
- Identify any spots that have a tricky rhythm. Choose one of those parts to work on.
- Listen and clap the rhythm to the part you’re working on. If you need to, try slowing the recording down until you can clap the rhythm easily, then speed it up and try again.
- Now sing or play on the piano on your own. Listen again to the recording. Are you matching the rhythm? If it’s hard to tell, try recording yourself and listening to see if your recording sounds the same as the original recording.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 with any other tricky sections of the song.
- Finally, sing along as you play the entire song. Go back and practice any parts you’re not sure of.
You can also know the rhythm of a song by looking at the sheet music. Learning to read rhythms, like learning to read notes, is a process that takes practice and patience. You can find out more about learning to read rhythms with our article “How to Read Rhythms.”
It’s all in the beat
All of these activities develop rhythm at the Primal Level, the very foundation. A good sense of rhythm doesn’t require counting or reading notes. While counting and reading are important as you advance in music studies, your sense of rhythm always goes back to the primal power of beat. Once you’re feeling the beat, check out my tips for learning to read rhythms and developing your mathematical (counting) rhythm skills.