Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Today, we're gonna talk about all down 8th note strumming,
which is a particular strumming pattern. Very, very effective, great for pop.
It's kind of a precursor to what we call 16th note strumming,
but don't freak out about the names. It's not important.
At this point, you will have always been looking at doing a down strum on the beat:
the 1, 2, 3 and the 4, and an upstroke on the 'and'.
Now, this is great and there's lots of different patterns that you can play.
It's a very, very effective style of strumming.
It's used most of the time.
if you wanna make things feel faster or have a little bit more energy,
or you want to put more strums in,
you need to double the amount of possible strums within a bar.
So, if we think about 8th note strumming, we had:
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
And that was the most strums we could get with eight strums in the bar.
Now, if we change all of those up strums to down strums,
so we strum down on the 'ands' as well as the beat:
the 1, 2, 3 and the 4, we end up with this:
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Now... should be easy, right? Used down strums to what we started with,
it was nice and easy, they're a little bit faster,
but it's not really a big deal.
The reason that we might wanna do that is,
it feels like it's got more energy, like there's something else going on.
So if we do 8th notes:
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
And then I change to all downs at the same tempo.
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It feels like it kind of picks it up somehow.
it feels a bit faster, again...
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
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It's definitely got a different feeling when you do all down strums.
Later on, we can start experimenting with adding upstrokes in there as well,
because the same principles apply with our 8th notes strumming,
as what this is now 16th note strumming. That's the proper big name for it.
Don't freak out about it.
But basically we've got 16 possible movements in the bar now,
'cause we've got eight downs,
and therefore we've magically got eight ups as well.
Don't worry about doing the upstrokes just yet.
We're just concentrating on the downs
and this feeling of moving things a little bit further forward, okay?
So it feels like it's got a bit more energy.
Coldplay are a great example of that, even on the slow songs.
'cause they're using all of the down strokes.
It feels like it's got kind of momentum in the song,
and I think that's a pretty important part of...
lot of those sort of styles.
Now, there's another part to it
which if you do all down strums,
eight per bar,
and you keep them the same,
it tends to sound a little bit boring, frankly.
It's missing something. If you're just literally going:
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Kinda sounds a little bit like a computer
programming a strumming or something.
it's missing that... the humanness.
And the way around that, is to introduce this idea of an accent,
so playing some strums louder than other ones,
and changing how we play it a bit.
So, the common place to put an accent is what we call the 'Backbeat'
which is beat 2 and beat 4.
It's where drummers play with their hand, the snare drum.
Excuse my ridiculous attempt at beatboxing
but it kind of a normal drum groove going like:
[beatboxing]
3 and 4 and 1,
2, 3 and 4.
It's the 2 and the 4 where we really feel that beat.
So...
a great thing to start working on with your strumming,
is doing smaller strums on all of the strums
except beat 2 and 4, where you do a little bit harder strum
and you strum all the strings.
So all of the other ones are slightly smaller.
So, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
so mainly focusing on the thicker strings here.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
1 and 2, 3, 4,
1, 2, 3, 4,
1, 2, 3, 4.
Back to just no accents, just focusing on the thicker strings.
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It's a bit boring, a bit computer like, it's not really doing anything.
As soon as we add:
2, 3, 4,
1, 2, 3, 4,
2, 3, 4,
1, 2, 3, 4,
1, 2.
it's so magical.
It really brings music to life as soon as you add that accent in,
it's like, it can start to feel really groovy, better.
It'll feel nicer.
That backbeat is kind of what makes you dance.
It's a really important part of drums and rhythm,
it's having that kind of pulse that we feel.
It's usually quite loud in the scheme of a mix of a song,
is to hear that so, if you put--
particularly if you're playing on your own,
playing a song on guitar on your own, maybe with the singer.
You wanna try and accent that backbeat.
It'll be a really important part moving forward in your journey.
And the easiest way to learn to start doing that,
is with this all down strumming.
You will eventually incorporate it into other strumming patterns as well,
so all of those strumming patterns that we talked about before,
you will learn to accent the 2 and the 4.
Like I said, this is the best place to learn it.
So literally, grab a chord, any chord, doesn't matter.
I'm gonna use A minor.
All down strums.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4,
1 and 2 and 3...
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and then try and keep doing the same thing, and make it feel nice.
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Spend some time just practicing through that without a metronome,
just trying to get it feeling good,
get used to what it feels like to play that way.
Eventually you want to start doing it with a metronome.
If you can make things feel great while you're playing with a metronome,
you're definitely on the right path, you're doing something good.
When you're playing just on your own, it can get a little bit wobbly,
you speed up and slow down a little bit,
which is sometimes nice, that humanness is sometimes nice.
But being able to develop that nice, good, relaxed feeling
whilst playing with a metronome is kind of challenging,
but a really good thing to be practicing.
The other challenge you're going to find with this,
when you're doing the all down strumming
is where the picking starts.
Now with an E chord, say,
it's easy, or a G chord, because the root notes on the thickest string
you play all of the strings for those chords. It's easy.
With an A chord, any type of A or A minor or a C,
ideally you just want to be picking from the 5th string.
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Now, later on you might end up using a little-- your thumb
to sneak over the top to mute the thicker string for the A minor chord.
With the C chord, you mute the thicker string with the 3rd finger,
so you can kinda get away with the picking
being slightly less accurate than you want.
Ideally, you want it just from the 5th string but...
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if you accidentally hit the thicker string on a C chord,
as long as you're muting the thicker string, it's going to be okay.
The D chord...
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feels a little harder
because already you're peaking from the 4th string
which is, you know, mainly when you're doing this style
you're picking the thicker strings
and then accenting through all of the rest.
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With the D chord...
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you're going to find it a little bit more awkward,
so nice thing to practice again, to be doing E,
A,
D,
A,
E,
A,
E,
A,
and back to E.
So, starting to get used to develop the accuracy of the picking hand,
to find the strings on its own. You can look at it,
you'll probably find yourself looking at it and that's okay.
Nitsuj was definitely struggling with this with the D chord,
particularly trying to get the-- picking the right strings.
But what I found is that the picking hand develops an eye on its own.
It tends to just feel where the strings are,
like the hand seems to know how to find them,
even though my hands floating, I've got no reference point.
It just tends to find the right string. That's just a practice thing.
That's something that'll come naturally with you.
Even if you don't think about it and you're not aware of it,
it will happen for you just through practicing.
So again, don't don't beat yourself up on it, but just be aware.
A lot of these things are gonna happen in the subconscious
but I feel like if you're aware of it,
you can encourage the ideas to kind of form and to grow a little bit, so,
and some of you might find yourself doing that and looking at it
and going beating yourself up because you're looking at it. Don't, it's fine!
Look at it if that's what you need to do.
Eventually it will start to happen
where you don't have to look at either hand.
You can just play with your eyes closed
and both hands will kind of feel their way around,
but looking at, especially at this stage, looking is completely fine.
The task, the practice is going to be,
one: just being able to do it on any chord
and getting used to the small strums
and putting the accent on beat 2 and the 4.
Once you can do it trying to make it feel good,
I'd suggest either an E chord or a G chord
or something where you don't have to worry about
muting in the accuracy of the picking hand to start off with.
Once you feel like you kind of get in the groove,
and it's feeling nice and you're kind of cool with it all,
then you want to start thinking...
about the accuracy of the picking hand,
and maybe trying to pick some chord progressions to play through,
where you're actually really focusing on
where the picking is starting for this all down strumming
I hope you enjoy it. I'll see you for more very soon. Bye-bye.