A rhythmic sense is a mysterious thing. It’s the thing you take for granted, the thing that sounds so simple, so obvious, until you attempt to play a note in the correct rhythm and your mind doesn’t hear it and your body can’t feel it. So many musicians play the right notes but can’t make them swing, can’t make them breathe, can’t make them pulse. This is because rhythm is not just something you understand, it is something you feel and when you fail to feel it, you fail because you are practicing to your metronome, not to your pulse. When you start to practice to your pulse, when you use your breath, your body and your ears to find your rhythm, you’ll find it becomes second nature.
A good sense of rhythm begins with an internal pulse that you feel without needing to hear clicks or drums. Practice this by walking, clapping, or dancing to music you enjoy. Before your brain processes the sound, your body will learn to feel it. These actions program your nervous system to expect time, not respond to it after the fact. With practice, your movements will help you internalize the pulse, and when music is paused or tempo changed, you will still be able to feel it. The internal sense of time is the best one to have. It will make you independent of any reference and will make playing with others a breeze.
One of the largest barriers to rhythm is excessive mental subdivision. This brings a linear, ‘step like’ quality to your playing and destroys the rhythmic flow. Try to subdivide bars, or pairs of bars, or even whole passages. Feel the larger rhythmic cycles. The rhythm section that seem to stretch and manipulate time tend to focus on feel more than mental subdivision. Feeling these larger rhythmic shapes will help you feel the rhythm as a smooth flowing thing rather than a series of individual events.
It is in the application of these skills in a musical setting, however, that you will see the most improvement in your ability to feel the music. Put on funk, bossa nova, Afrobeat, or swing music, and try to tap, dance, or play along to the groove without concern for playing the “right” notes. At first, you’re not aiming for precision, you just want to allow the music to dictate your movement until it begins to feel natural. Eventually, you can incorporate your instrument into the mix, still focusing on capturing the feeling of the music. By doing so, you will begin to shift both your mind and body into a state where groove becomes the central means of musical communication, and rhythm will become less of a thing you play and more a thing you are.
In the end, having the rhythm means you completely trust your inner clock and playing becomes as automatic as breathing. It takes time, practice, and the ability to allow yourself to be moved without mental effort, but when you accomplish this you feel totally comfortable and free to express yourself. Each time you hit the pocket you feel the joy of being in the now. Mastering rhythm isn’t a destination to be achieved but an attitude to be maintained. Once you are in the pocket you begin to feel the music in its purest and most potent way and become one with it.