David's Tip of the Day: Beat 1 Emphasis: Work on your Rhythm... Work with a Metronome - Part 4

The time signature for blues is 4/4. The top number denotes how many beats per measure/bar and the bottom number denotes which rhythmic value receives the beat (in this case, the quarter note... 1/4). It's important we keep track of where each bar is. The emphasis of many licks starts on beat 1... many rhythmic patterns (such as chugging/chording) are one bar in length... and this is where chord change happens, which influences how we phrase.

When playing to a metronome with a continuously-similar click, it's easy for students to add or drop a beat here or there and not notice it. A great way to fix this is to use a metronome that places an emphasis (by having a different pitch, tone and/or volume) on beat 1 of the bar. Here's a very simple example of this: http://www.webmetronome.com

I've placed Example 1.5 from Solo Harmonica Study 2 on our Facebook page (facebook.com/bluesharmonica) and highlighted the downbeats (beat 1) of each bar... notice that they're the first happening in each bar... knowing this will be helpful for when you do this yourself on other studies. Try to play this example with the online metronome, focusing heavily on using beat 1 as your reference point.