Most Western roots and pop music is composed in just a handful of familiar time signatures, most commonly 2/4 and 4/4, but also 3/4 (waltz time), and 6/8 (jigs). In this lesson, Grant pushes you beyond this rhythmic comfort zone to get a feel for how to play in more complex time signatures such as 5/4 or 7/4, which are standard in many ethnic music traditions and increasingly integrated into contemporary compositions. Grant introduces some key strategies for playing in odd meters, including working with a metronome, breaking the beats into subsection pulses, and using strum patterns to emphasize internal rhythm patterns. In this video, Grant shows you how to tackle playing in 7/4.
