11 Tips to Help You Strum Better!

hey how you doing justin here today i'm going to take a crack at answering a very very common beginner question i see it all the time on forums and stuff and the question is why is strumming so hard and the easy answer is you must be doing it wrong strumming is a weird thing because actually it is very very simple the trick if you want to call it a trick is that the hand keeps moving consistently all the time now there are of course caveats here if you get really into fancy fun guitar or there's other advanced techniques that you can use where strumming does become very difficult or something you've got to do a lot of work on and where that consistent movement is abandoned but nearly everyone strums the same way when it comes to like basic strumming they keep the hand moving consistently it's a bit weird because in guitar land most people do things that are a little different like the way they finger the different chords can be very different james taylor great example one of the finest acoustic guitar players of all time plays the d chord and acord in ways that's like most people don't do it that way and that's fine because it's about music it's about expression it's about feeling but when you watch people strum and i definitely recommend this as something to do is to go and watch a whole bunch of guitar players strum the guitar just watch some live videos a good trick is to turn the sound off so you're just looking at their strumming hand and they'll be doing it evenly nearly all the time there's some great examples guys like neil young even if he's just strumming once in a bar he still keeps his hand moving so he'll go like [Music] always the hand is moving and most people will do that he's kind of obvious in the the motions are quite big some people are just the movements might be very small you might not notice them but nearly everyone strums that way a couple of exceptions one that i notice uh that i've seen up close a few times and it still baffles me is ron wood from the rolling stones of the faces he seems to do all sorts of random picking directions and it still it works amazingly i've got a feeling it might be one of the reasons that makes the stones rhythm stuff so interesting is that keith is pretty consistent with his strong emotion and ronnie's the opposite so that may be one of those things that kind of gels in a real beautiful way but for most people and especially beginners you want to start off by working on a consistent hand motion now if you're doing my beginners course you will have learned it that way anyway we start off with just doing a down strum on beat one then we move it to two down strums on beat one and three then four beats to the bar strumming down on one two three and four and then up strokes on the ands and that is the foundation you definitely want to get solid with that if you've learned wrongly if you've learned in a different way or you've found it a real struggle i would recommend going back to doing that real simple just four down strums a beat one two three four getting used to this consistent movement of the hand if you can do it with a metronome great but you don't have to think about that ideally you want to be tapping your foot on the beat as well so just getting used to this feeling of the down strums on one two three four that's you definitely need to get that kind of soundly grounded for your playing that's if you can't do that even without thinking about it then you know you're going to struggle a bit so that will be the first thing to think about now in between each of those downs is an up and i could add them in now one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and and the truth is no matter what the pattern is here i'm going to keep that hand moving consistently and it'll work [Music] which is the most common strumming pattern there is down down up up down but you can see if i stop strumming my hand is actually moving still exactly the same way we're going down down up up down down you can get as crazy as you like with the patterns [Music] [Applause] it doesn't matter if you keep the hand consistent it feel it's a bit like dancing you're kind of in the groove there's something moving around that's it's got it going on and you can relax into it because it's consistent you have to think about it it's just going now relaxing and making it feel good is one of the most important parts for beginners once you can actually do the mechanics if you're still feeling it struggling a bit it's probably because you're very tense and you've got to learn to relax and to make a pattern feel good so i definitely recommend for anyone who's struggling with that kind of thing is just sitting down playing the same pattern over again and focusing on making it feel nice we know music is a language but it's not a spoken language i think people feel how you feel when you perform so if you're really tense and it's all you're kind of fighting it when people listen to you they're going to feel that too and that's not nice that's not a nice thing to have to feel to listen to to absorb that feeling right you want people to feel relaxed so you even and a really nice thing to do is just mute all the strings so you're not actually playing a chord because that can be a bit distracting just thinking now about let's take that down down up up down pattern i call it old faithful up up down one two and three and four and then just think about trying to make it feel good it's the only thing i'm thinking about is just relaxing trying to get it like a so it's feeling comfortable to me and you know now a couple of times already i've put extra strums in but i've probably you well you might have noticed but it doesn't matter it definitely doesn't ruin anything if you change the rhythm if you go like that it sounds really wonky straight away doesn't it as soon as you've got a groove on if it if you stop moving or it goes like well well it's weird you got to remember that rhythm has been something that's been in our species for thousands of years aboriginals clicking sticks together and dancing right that's the earliest that i'm aware of anyway of musical form the the rhythm the groove is inside us our western harmony the chords and stuff only a few hundred years so if you're going to get the chords wrong it matters a lot less than if you get the rhythm wrong so rhythm really is something that you want to think about if i take that pattern for example that down down up up down pattern and instead of doing two ups in a row i try and keep the pattern alternating so uh one two and three and four one two and three and four one two and three and four oh it's just really it feels awful i'm having to really concentrate and it doesn't feel nice a little bit of it is what we're used to as well there's a lot of different elements here but we're used to hearing those bass strings on the beat and the upstroke strokes in between this sound the sound of a down strum and the sound of an up strum is different so we're used to hearing not it just it just sounds weird it doesn't fit with what we're used to hearing because everybody pretty much strums the same way it gets faster of course okay so if you're going to do funk strumming we instead of dividing about a bar into 8 we divide it into 16 so you have this one e and a two e and a three and a thorium [Music] so there's more movement and i guess you could say that's harder but again that's not the thing that we're talking about for beginners we're talking just most people when they ask that question they're struggling with something to do with the direction of the pick and whether it should be a down and whether it should be an up so if you're that person you're really struggling with that even if you're a more experienced guitar player i would recommend that you head back over to my website check out the beginners course and watch all of the strumming lessons from every lesson in my beginners course okay so each lesson has a strumming element to it so i'd recommend that you go through and watch all of those things and make sure that you're not missing something pick some of the patterns that you feel connected to because we all connect a little bit to different patterns that one old faithful is so common like unbelievably common uh strumming pattern that would be a good one to work on so i'd recommend taking it practicing it seeing if there's something that's going wrong because just one other thing i should mention as well is things like holding the pick too hard can make things go really wonky using a thick pick can make things go wonky so you definitely want to be using a thin pick not grabbing it too hard and i mean if you're a beginner you should be using a paper thin pick the thinnest that you can get jim dunlop nylons the white one whatever that i'm not sure what exactly the thickness is really thin you shouldn't be holding it too hard because if you hold it too hard you're going to create tension in your arm and that's going to stop you relaxing so you want to feel it nice and loose and relaxed you want to be at least aware that on the down strums you're going to be hitting mostly the thicker strings probably hit all of them but you're definitely going to be hitting the thicker strings whereas on an upstroke it's a little bit more kind of away from the guitar and you're more likely to hit just the thinnest strings and not be hitting the bass string so much there are times where you will hit all of the strings on every down and every up especially doing this gonna in that sort of instance i'm hitting all of the strums all of the strings with each strum so there's not really one set answer here but i'm trying to give you as many of the common problems that i can think of and hopefully this will be enough to uh get you through i'm reluctant to say that there are rules in strumming but there are definitely really common ways that nearly everyone does it because it's easier and generally sounds better and that's the consistent motion now if you've learned to play by the rules and you're confident and consistent with that kind of strumming when you encounter something that breaks the rules i had a double time splang i call it where this sort of thing where you have a there's a little where you're putting a down strum where an up strum would usually be the trick with being able to do those things is being able to get back to the consistent pattern afterwards right that's it's not actually hard to do it it's hard to get back into the consistency suddenly change into this thing and then back again particularly with funk when you get into doing so adding some triplets into a 16th note that kind of thing there are things that are difficult and they take practice but if you try and get into those things before you're consistent with the hand motion you're going to really struggle one last thing i should mention is whether you use a pick or not now i would recommend for most people that you learn to strum using a pick but you don't have to there are many examples of fantastic guitar players martin offler jeff beck james taylor whatever that strum without a pick and it sounds amazing if you're going to strum without a pick you can just use the thumb [Applause] [Music] and you can hear straight away it's a lot rounder sound which can be nice if you like that sound you might want to start practicing without a pick because it is a little tamer if you don't if you've got to practice at night without waking the kids up you might want to experiment with using your thumb you can also use your finger your first finger you get a little bit more zing there from the nail of on a down stroke with the first finger and then it's a bit quieter on the upstroke some people use a thumb down and a finger up that's fine as well there's not really a set rule when it comes to the finger style thing there's a lot of choices as to which one you're going to use one thing that i do sometimes if i'm playing acoustic guitar is i hold my thumb and my first finger together like i'm holding it and strum and that seems to be quite an effective way it seems to create a little bit more tension in the fingers so you can get a little bit more positive contact with the string sounds a little bit more like i'm using a pick but it doesn't matter it's completely up to you whether you choose to use a pick or not i think it's easier for most people to start with a pick and then move to not using a pick later but some people have exactly the opposite and that's okay figure out the one that works best for you we are all individual after all if you're over on youtube i really appreciate you hitting that subscribe button hit the bell icon so you're notified when i've got new lessons coming out don't forget to slap the like and let me know in the comments about any more questions you've got on strumming or other things if there's a question that's really been irking you let me know in the comments i'll see if i can't get to it remember the beginners course over on just a guitar completely free still amazing practice assistant to help you stay on track and all of that sort of stuff so head on over there there'll be links in the description i'll see you for plenty more very soon you'll take care of yourselves bye-bye you

Channel: JustinGuitar

Views: 677,679

Keywords: why is strumming so hard, strumming guitar, strumming pattern, strumming lesson, guitar strumming exercices, guitar strumming patterns for beginners, guitar lessons for beginners, rhythm guitar, justinguitar beginner, justin guitar beginner, guitar for beginners, justinguitar strumming, Justin guitar strumming, how to strum a guitar for beginners, strumming for beginners, Strumming lessons

Id: kmzS-7KiNlw

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021