Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Hello Tomo, i hope you are doing well , you are doing so great on GW and youtube, thanks for the knowledge and good vibes that you share, this makes so many people happy around the world, here santiago and i send you greetings from Mexico.
Also hi to all people in this forum, hope that this questions help you all guys too.

So, now talking about music, i had recently an injury on my wrist, and i couldn´t play for some time, now i´m allowed to start playing a little bit each day. So before, once i started playing in a band i realized my internal tempo was kinda bad and i was struggling with getting into tempo or the rythm my mates where doing. And thinking about past years, when i was a kid starting to learn, i really never played with metronome or focused on rythm, so now that i´m trying to, i found it really difficult.

I saw there´s a lesson about rythm without guitar, i found it really usefull, but i wonder if it´s any other lesson really focused on that rythmic aspect, and internal tempo. I am also learning to sing, and i wanted to ask you ¿what exercises would you recommend me to do at first while i can play just a little time? and also ¿what exercise or lesson can i do when i can play fully?
I really want to improve my tempo in most ways i can, so after that i can apply it in my playing, right now my level is about learning triads and some basic music theory and i´m doing the essential chords, picking, strumming, muting, so i can be sure my basis is complete and good

I really hope this can help many more people that have the same problem as me. Thank you Tomo, for reading this, i hope you have a beautiful week, kind regards, and so excited to hear from you, i am back to GW after some time. Thanks

Santiago Urdapilleta

Welcome back Santiago!
So glad your wrist is getting better.

Two great techniques I work on for rhythm are:

R37 swing groove strumming:
https://tomovhxtv.vhx.tv/videos/ft-root-3rd-7th-swing-groove-technique

Blues Shuffle Bassline
https://tomovhxtv.vhx.tv/foundation-core-music-lessons/videos/fb-blues-shuffle-bassline

Both lessons show working with a metronome too. So important to improve our internal tempo.

Very best,
Kurtis

I really dig the rhythm questions Santiago, good to meet you in the forum. Sorry about the wrist troubles, those are tough to be away from the guitar, glad you are getting on the mend. Lot's of listening during the down times for sure. Lots of blues listening helps with rhythm for me, percussive jazz bosa nova styles too, little samba. The Metronome lesson is a good refresher from the search menu option, excellent tips on swing groove. There is a tapping lesson too. Much practice with swing groove on 2 & 4 is where I am at. Hope that helps, - johno

Don't worry about the wrist , Santiago ! Give you wrist a little time , the wrist well recover and be strong before , our body is really amazing .
So grateful hear you journey
https://tomovhxtv.vhx.tv/forums/general/73384-focus-on-rhythm
Here a thread about Rhythm , and have treasure with Tomo supplement lesson, try it, will have fun :)

That is the tapping video in your post, thanks for sharing those links Jiayang!! I am on the not-so-smart phone and it doesn't do two things at once like search and post.. Yep, there it is, a great tapping review to do at work and try notto bother my co-workers :) - johno

Thank you Kurt, Johno and Jiayang for suggestions & support!

Tomo

Hello, Santiago! It is great to meet you. Thank you for asking this super important question about rhythm. As you can see, we've got some great people in this community who love to help each other :) Thank you, Kurt, Johno, and Jiayang, for the support!

While your wrist recovers, you can practice without your guitar. Before you start working on rhythm with your guitar, it helps to feel the beat with your body. Keep it simple - basic 1&2&3&4& type beat and counting. From there, you can practice feeling the length of notes/rest through tapping and accenting practice (like the video Jiayang shared). Doing these types of exercises with your body will help you feel/internalize a simple rhythm.

Then, when your wrist is doing better and you work on rhythm exercises with your guitar (like the videos Kurt shared), you will have that foundation of rhythm in your body. Hope this makes sense!