Hey, how you doing? Justin back with you
to talk a little bit more about strumming.
Specifically, I wanna expand your horizons a bit
from the all down 8th note strumming
that we talked about last week.
So, very quick refresher,
hopefully you've been working on it anyway.
But we started off our most basic strumming
back when we were doing the 1st grade stuff with all 8th notes,
so going 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, and then combinations
so going 1, 2 and 3 and 4.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, or whatever.
Any combination where our hand was making 8 movements in the bar.
Last week we introduced this idea of doing all down picks, down strums
on 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
so we ended up with 8 down movements
but we knew that we had 8 up movements as well.
We just weren't playing on them, so having this,
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
and putting the accent on the 2 and the 4 is a really cool thing to do.
You didn't have to do it but that was part of the deal.
Now...
obviously in between every down strum, there is an up strum.
And the kind of the gist of this lesson
is I don't want you to be afraid of trying out other patterns,
so long as you keep your hand moving consistently.
So if you're looking at more advanced tunes
like the proper strumming in "Wonderwall" or those kind of things,
the patterns are fairly complicated.
It's not something I'd suggest you go that full on at this point.
But I don't want you to be afraid of trying out
more advanced strumming patterns,
so long as you keep that hand moving, it's gonna be okay.
A really fun thing to do is to write out your own patterns
and just to write out literally,
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
write 'downs' above all of them and then choose some places to put some up strums
and have a bit of an experiment.
So long as you can keep the pattern consistent
and you keep your arm moving evenly,
it's not getting jerky or pausing at any point,
you should be fine.
And you should have some fun and you'll learn a bit in the process.
What I thought I'd do in this lesson is just take you through three patterns
that might be worth giving some practice,
depending on what songs you decide that you wanna play,
and whether you like it and whether you've got time for it.
This week, there's quite a lot of stuff going on,
so I'm not scheduling practice time for this right away.
but it could replace something
if you feel you're confident with it sooner.
So if you're happy with your F chord cheats
earlier than you anticipated,
or happy with the F chord earlier than anticipated.
If you're one of those lucky big, strong-handed people,
then you might wanna replace it with this kind of exercise.
So, the first one...
is playing all of the down strums, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
but putting an up strum after beat 2 and after beat 4.
So you end up with this pattern:
1 and 2 e and 3 and 4 e and,
1 and 2 e and 3 and 4 e and.
Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, down, up, down.
1 and 2 e and 3 and 4 e and.
Now, you wanna start that nice and slow like that,
but most of the songs that are using that
are kind of a little bit faster than that.
When it gets a bit faster, you need to relax a little bit more into it.
So you'd end up with:
1 and 2 e and 3 and 4 e and,
1 and 2 e and 3 and 4 e and.
It's a really, really nice little pattern that one.
It's almost like a little bounce off the backbeat.
If your accenting on 2 and 4, having that up afterwards,
it almost like-- and it echoes it a little bit.
and it can be quite a cool little trick to get involved with.
Another nice pattern that I think you should experiment with
is putting an up strum after the 'and' of 2 and the 'and' of 4.
So, 1 and 2 and a
3 and 4 and a,
1 and 2 and a
3 and 4 and a,
down, down, down, down, up
down, down, down, down, up.
1 and 2 and a 3 and 4 and a.
1 and 2 and a 3 and 4 and a,
Now, I just added an extra strum.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter if you accidentally hit another strum in the pattern.
It doesn't at all.
it's totally, totally fine to add in more or less
as many extra strums as you want.
You wanna try and aim for a consistent pattern,
but you do deliberately sometimes wanna have a change from that.
It's like having a drum filler but just a little variation every now and again,
usually every 4 and 8 bars, but it really doesn't matter,
As long as you keep that hand moving consistently,
everything is gonna be fine.
Now, a little extension of this pattern
is to add an up strum after beat 3 as well,
so you end up with this pattern, which is I think is a really nice one.
It's this:
1 and 2 and a 3 e and 4 and a
1 and 2 and a 3 e and 4 and a.
What's really important here is that it feels good.
You wanna practice these patterns over and over again,
and really work on making it feel nice when you play it.
You should feel like dancing.
You got to get-- that's the point of it.
The whole aim of these strumming patterns
is to make them feel good.
Practicing a bit without a metronome is probably a good idea first of all.
Just going for the hand mute without worrying about the chords.
As soon as you introduce the chords, there's more to worry about
and you’ll less focused on the rhythmic elements.
So if you're gonna practice it, mute up the strings there
and just practice the pattern on its own.
Some of the counting is gonna be new for some of you.
We haven't gone into a great deal of detail.
It's something that we cover a lot more in the Intermediate Course.
This is 16th note strumming.
Basically, in between the number and the ‘and’
we add an 'e' and an 'a'.
So we have this:
1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a
is the count.
Again, I wouldn't worry too much about it,
‘cause it can get a bit more complicated later on down the line,
but we're still in beginner territory here really.
This is just, I want you to be
not afraid to add in upstrokes to your simple all downs,
so it's kind of the point of this lesson.
Particularly if strumming is alright for you,
‘cause again we're all gonna find this journey a little different.
Some people are gonna struggle more with the rhythms,
some people are gonna struggle more with the chords.
It all comes out with practice,
so you'll end up being able to do all of those things.
You need to work harder on the things that you're struggling with.
and if you're still finding the basic 8th note strumming,
you don't wanna go near this.
But if you’re cool with the strumming up to this point,
you're like I want a bit more food,
this is a great place to explore.
I know for myself with the left-handed journey,
the strumming is actually feeling pretty good.
I feel like I can have a go at playing like the "Wonderwall" rhythm.
It's pretty ropey and I can't make the chord changes,
but, you know, it's okay to have a little bit of a go
at those sort of things.
The important thing and the really, really key thing here
is that keeping the hand moving consistently,
‘cause if you don't keep the hand moving consistently,
then you're kind of training yourself to do something that's not right.
There are times way later down the journey
where you don't keep the hand moving consistently.
But at this point, that should be the focus of your attention
when you're doing any rhythmic stuff, rhythmic practice,
or working on your time, working on making it feel good,
is making sure that the hand is moving consistently,
and you've got that feeling that it's all good.
The consistency, the feeling, the kind of the continuous motion of that hand
is gonna be the thing that really helps you hold your groove on.
So, there's three patterns to have an experiment with.
You can add it into your practice routine if you want.
If you wanna add it in later,
or you could, you know, add it in
and do a bit extra practice each day if you wanted to.
If you don't feel ready for it, you could leave it for a little bit.
You could substitute it for something later on.
You know, at your stage, you have to do a little bit
of self-assessment,
and working out what things you really need to work on the most.
and you'll tell that by playing songs.
When you're playing songs, what are the parts of playing songs
that you're struggling with the most?
So I really hope you enjoyed that.
See you for more very soon.