One of the primary ways a guitarist can make a song sound good is by strumming a guitar to the music. A guitarist with a good grasp of
strumming can bring a two chord song to life. In this first lesson on strumming, we'll examine some of the basics of strumming the guitar, and
learn a widely used strumming pattern.
Grab your guitar, and make sure you have your guitar pick in hand. Using your fretting hand, form a G major chord on the neck Now, take a
look at the following example, which is a very basic strumming pattern.
This pattern is one bar long, and contains 8 strums. It might look confusing, so for now, just pay attention to the arrows at the bottom. An
arrow pointing down indicates that you should strum downwards on the guitar. Similarly, an upwards arrow indicates that you should strum upwards.
Notice that the pattern starts with a down stroke, and ends with an upstroke. So, if you were to play the pattern twice in a row, your hand
wouldn't have to vary from it's continual down-up motion.
Now, try playing the pattern, taking special care to "keeping the rhythm". You should be aiming for trying to keep the time between strums
exactly the same. When you get done playing the example once, loop it, without any sort of pause. Count out loud: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2
and (etc.) Notice that on the "and" (often referred to as the "offbeat") you are always using an upwards strum. This is something to keep in mind
as we progress.
If you are playing an acoustic guitar, make sure to strum directly over the sound hole. On electric guitar, strum over the body (different
locations will give you different sounds), not over the neck Make sure all strings are ringing clearly. Make sure the volume of your down strums
and up strums are equal. Be careful not to strum too hard, as this often causes strings to rattle, and produces an undesirable sound.
Be careful not to strum too softly, as this will produce a "wimpy" sound. Your pick should be striking the strings with a relatively firm, even
stroke
Think of your elbow as being the top of a pendulum; your arm should swing up and down from it in a steady motion, never pausing at any time.
Having said that, the bulk of the picking motion should come from a rotation of the wrist, rather than from the forearm. Be sure not to keep your
wrist stiff when playing.
Now that we've covered the very basics of strumming, we can move on to something a little bit more challenging. Don't worry; we're not going to
be adding anything technically hard to play to the next strumming pattern. In fact, we're going to be taking something away! By removing only one
strum from the previous pattern, we will create one of the most widely used and versatile strumming patterns in pop, country, and rock music!
Here is the key: when we remove the strum, the initial tendency for the guitarist will be to stop the strumming motion in the picking hand.
This is exactly what we DON'T want to do, because it mixes up the nice pattern we had going of all the down strums being ON the beat, and all the
up strums being OFF the beat (on the "and" or on the "offbeat".)
The trick is to keep the strumming motion going in the picking hand; but ever so slightly lift the hand away from the body of the guitar
momentarily, on the down stroke of the 3rd beat, so the pick misses the strings. Then, on the next upstroke (the "and" of the 3rd beat), bring
the hand back closer to the body of the guitar, so the pick hits the strings. So, to summarize, the upward/downward motion of the picking hand
should not change AT ALL from the first pattern. Deliberately avoiding the strings with the pick on the 3rd beat of the pattern is the only
factor that has changed.
Listen to, and play along with, this second strumming pattern, to get a better idea on how this new pattern should sound. Once you are
comfortable with this, try it at a somewhat faster speed. It is important to be able to play this accurately; don't be satisfied with getting
MOST of the up and down strums in the right order. If it's not perfect, it will make learning any harder strums virtually impossible. Be sure
that you can play the pattern many times in a row, without having to stop because of an incorrect strum.
This is a tricky concept, and it can be guaranteed that you will have some problems with it at first. The idea is, if you introduce basic
strumming patterns early, within a couple of lessons, you'll have gotten the hang of it, and will be sounding great! It is important to try not
to get frustrated... soon, this will become second nature.
