Timing/Rhythm

[No Nice Guy]

So for the past year, I've been on a hiatus from playing guitar, to learn about music production, sound design, mixing, and mastering.  I picked up my guitar today only to find that (unsurprisingly) my sense of rhythm was more or less gone.  I'm starting to practice to drum tracks I program in my DAW (digital audio workstation), but I still have a long way to go.  Anyone got any tips for improving my rhythm in my playing?

Also, on an unrelated note, if anyone here needs someone to mix, master, add sounds to, or something like that, I'd love to have something to practice on - I haven't had very much recently.

[Jkendrick]

After a few years of not playing out (i.e. just hacking around on my acoustic by myself) I found I similarly had gotten sloppy with my timing. The simple answer is to always practice with a metronome. Practicing to a drum track makes its too easy for me to cheat/readjust. A metronome is more unforgiving and really works a lot better for me.

I now do a couple of really simple exercises with a metronome to warm up every time I pick up my guitar.  

1. As fast as you can without messing up, play eighth notes for three minutes.  Once through with just down strokes, once through with just upstrokes, and once with alternate picking. Left hand is irrelevant. That should take about 10 minutes.

2. At that same metronome tempo, play eighth notes chromatically on each string. For example:

F, F#, G, G# on the low E string, then A#, B, C, C# on the A string, etc.  When you reach the G# on the high E string move up a half step to A and work back down in the same manner.  Work all the way up and down the neck.

These simple warm-ups will help get you locked in and shouldn't take much more than 15 minutes.


P.S. if you don't already, get a metronome app on your phone. I'll mess around with tapping out beats on it if I find myself bored even when I don't have my guitar around.