Rhythm Primer (part8): Eighth and 16th rests

In this rhythm guitar tutorial, we're going to learn some more about rests. A few lessons ago, we learned about quarter, half and whole rests. In this lesson we're going to look at 8th and 16th rests. In reality they are no different in the way you play any other rest. The only difference is how long the rest is.

Just like an eighth note, an eighth rest is worth half of a beat. This is what one looks like:

Also, like a 16th note, a 16th rest is worth half of an eighth note (or a quarter of a beat). Just like how you add flags to an eighth note to make it a 16th note, you add an extra flag to a 16th rest, like this:

Now let's look at some examples using 8th and 16th rests. Notice in example 1, the first and 2nd measures are almost identical except beat 4 of the 2nd measure has a rest instead of being struck. This means your arm movement will be almost identical in measures 1 and 2.

Description: Example one: intro to 8th rests.

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Description: Example two: using 8th rests part two.

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Before we do exercises with the sixteenth rests, one word of advice on your arm movement. Notice that we will be resting on beat 1 and 3, but you still want to move your arm down on those beats (of course avoiding the strings), that way when you play the 'e' part of the beat you play it with an upstroke just like you would in the first measure. As with the first exercise, this exercise has the same rhythm in the 1st and 2nd measure except the rests substituted for the down beat of beats 1 and 3.

Description: Example three: using sixteenth rests.

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Just like in the last exercise, make sure every downbeat and every "+" is played with a downstroke and every "e" or "a" is played with an up. This will be true of almost every rhythm pattern you play using 16th notes or 16th rests.

Description: Example four: using both eighth and sixteenth rests.

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Description: Example Five : both kinds of rests.

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One last thing is, just like you can further divide notes into 32nd, 64th notes and more, you can also divide rests as much as you'd like, too. Just add a flag for each time you divide (for example a 64th rest would have four flags). That's about it for rests. We're almost to the end of the primer series. The next lesson in the series is about dotted rhythms.

Click here to go to the next lesson: Dotted Rhythms

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