Hey, how are you doing? Justin here.
Today I'm going to show you how to add a percussive hit into your
strumming pattern. It's a super cool technique. Works great on
acoustic guitar, it works on electric guitar as well but if you've got
both available seems a little easier to learn on acoustic guitar, so
maybe start off with that one. We're going to start by studying
the technique in detail. If you get it right, if you get the progression
right it's relatively easy to incorporate into strumming patterns.
If you get it wrong it will always feel a little clunky. So that's gonna
be the first thing we'll look at. Then I'm going go through a couple
of very specific strumming patterns that I recommend you start off with
but it is the kind of technique that you can explore on your own
as well and make up your own strumming patterns. Let's get into a close up.
Now, the first thing here is I can get that hit without the fretting
hand getting involved at all. It is not responsible for the muting.
It's all in that hand. A lot of people feel like it's going on
here. It's not. It's all gotta be the picking hand's gig. So what's
going on here? How I'm I able to do that? It looks from this angle
like I'm just doing a regular strum but there's a persussive hit and it's
revealed if I move my hand a little bit further like that. What's actually
happening in slow motion and with a funny hand angle is that this
part of the palm of the hand, the edge of your hand is hitting the
strings first and then the strum is coming down afterwards. OK?
So the actual motion I'm going to go a little bit further that way,
it's coming down, the hand hits the strings and the pick is coming
on. So in real slow motion, we've got this. It all happens at once.
Right? So when you see like that, it just looks like a strum. But
actually what's happening when it's slowed down is that the hand is
arriving first and then the strum is coming ever so slightly afterwards.
It is like, there's no time difference there. It's not a one, two motion
when it comes for real but you want to start learning it that
way. The first step is to feel it like a strumming pattern. It's
not an inward motion. It's down and in. Because you nearly always
have this on a down strum not on an up strum. So you only get the
feel of moving your hand down onto the strings and the palm resting
on it. So that's your first motion to get use to is, down with the
arm and then the whole of the edge of the hand is touching all of the
strings. Not just the lowest strings so the bottom strings are ringing
out, not just the thickest strings so the thin strings might ring out.
It's gotta to cover all of them. So you want to think about, first
of all, that hand just making a downward motion to cover all of
the strings. That's something that you can just practice first of all
like that. Getting the feeling of the arm coming down and then,
your hand will go to slightly different angle to normal in order
to cover all of those strings. OK? Down motion like that. And it wants
to feel fairly relaxed to do that. You want to keep doing it over and over
untill it sort of sits in there and it feels confortable to do that. It
doesn't feel completely clunky, although at first when you try
to do this it, if NITSUJ is anything to go by it is going to feel pretty
clunky still. Now as soon as you've got that first motion down, you
want to think about it going down and then doing a little strum at
the end. So hand down, strum. Hand down, strum. And again I want to
point out that the fretting hand is not getting involved here. If you
use that to mute all of the strings you'll never develop the technique
properly. OK? You'll always going to be relying on doing kind of
weird things with your chords if you're doing that. You want to
practice this without the fretting hand getting involvced at all.
Just rest it on your leg or whatever. So hand comes down, strum. Hand
comes down, strum. It will feel very one, two at the beginning
and that's OK. Down, strum. Down, strum. Down, strum. Down, strum.
Down, strum. Down, strum. Down, strum. Down, strum. Down, strum.
Until it's just happening on it's own. It is, the gap will get smaller
and smaller the more you practice it and I would recommend before
you go any further, just doing this. Just practicing, trying to
get a nice muted hit. Now there's actually a couple of elements here.
You're hearing the pick hitting the strings but there is a little
bit as well...you can just hear it here, if I just hit in, the strings
hitting actually on the metal of the frets.
I'm exagerating it now, I'm just hitting a bit. The actual this,
is a combination of these strings hitting on the frets and the strum.
That combination that gives it a nice kind of bark and it's for
sure the first thing that you want to practice. It's literally just
that. The first 4 or 5 practice sessions, if you just spend 5 minutes
just...actually the first one will be...oups...oups
It's gonna be like that. You're going to get notes ringing out
all the time. You try to find that point where the edge of your hand
is going to mute all of the strings. One, two. One, two. One, two.
Don't be in a hurry. Don't rush your way through these things.
Make sure you get it right. I keep saying it over and over again but
practice makes permanent, so practice perfectly. So don't keep practicing
the mistake over and over again. I think it was Einstein that said
something about it being very foolish to do something over and over
again and expect the result to be different. You got to practice this
stuff and get it right. Just nice and slowly and carefully.
Now once you're through that and you've got the hit right, I would
recommend starting off with a really simple pattern which would be a
chord on beat 1, the hit and then a chord again then a hit.
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Now putting the hit on beat 2 and 4 is emulating
what a drummer does. Now you have to excuse my incredibly bad beat
boxing but a drummer's usual standard kind of pattern would be putting the
kick drum, that's the big round one they play with their feet,
do, do, do kind of sound. That would happen on beats 1 and 3 and
the snare drum which is the one that they'll play with their hand
here, would normally happen on beat 2 and 4. So you end up with
this kind of do, ka, do, ka, do, ka the ka being the snare drum do, ka
do, ka, do, ka, do, ka, do and it's pretty consistent this 2 and 4
snare drum. They do play around with it of course like, you know,
it's not a set rule that it always has to be on 2 and 4 but it's a
very, very standard kind of a pattern. It really helps kind of move things
along a bit, it adds a real kind of a groove to things that you're
playing. So the easiest start is literally, just whatever chords
you like because remember the chord doesn't matter all of your muting
is being done with your picking hand. Just play a chord, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4
1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4...
Now what your looking for here as well as getting a nice clean hit,
is the feeling of consistency with the hand. You should be really
feel no difference than if you're doing like that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4
It sounds completely different doesn't it having that percussive
hit in there. But the actual feeling of it, the feeling under my fingers
is the same. I've still got that kind of continuous motion with
the arm feeling which is the key thing. I definitely recommend spending
some time on that first getting used to be able to play the down
open regular chord and then mixing in the percussive hit. Now the
pattern that most people like doing is the kind of the "Proud Mary"
thing where you have still the backbeat on 2 and 4 but you play
all of the other strums, the downs and the ups in between. Now this
one is gonna take a little more practice. You want to start super
slow. I'm going to do it on D chord. So you would go down, up, hit,
up, down, up, hit, up. That would be the pattern. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
OK? To start off with you want to do it like painfully slowly.
Down, up, hit, up, down, up, hit, up, down, up, hit. Now the one thing
to note here is a strum on the hit. Can you see my pick is staying
underneath the strings ready for the upstroke. That position of
the pick is the thing that will make it easier or harder. If you
go and then your part of your reaction is, the pick starts to
kind of rebound straight away after you've done the hit, you're not
gonna be ready for that upstroke after afterwards. So you wanna
get us to the practice of it going down and staying down at the end
of that hit, ready to do an upstrum if needed. OK? So down, up, hit
up, down, up, hit, up, down, up, hit, up, down, up, hit, up, down,
up, hit, up...
What ends up happening when you get into this kind of pattern is that
where you do the percussive hit feels a little bit more like a flick.
You've still got the consistent motion with the forearm but just
where you've got the thing in because of the change of angle
of the wrist, feels to be like a flick. Like I'm flicking.
Like a flicky feeling to it because the hand goes down the chord,
the pick goes after it, it ends up kind of having a flicky feeling
to it. So it does a little different to a standard strumming pattern.
If I was just going...
You remember as well that one of the things we talked about is this accent.
So hopefully you're already a little bit familiar with the idea of adding
in an accent on beat 2 and 4. So now we're just kind of accenting
in the extreme and putting on that backbeat hit. OK?
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
It's really, really cool little idea. Once you've got this down
there are lots and lots of different ways to use it. You can of course
experiment with the pattern. If your going to do it, it's generally
a good idea to keep it fairly consistent not like doing it nearly all of the
time and sometimes not add that hit in because then it just sounds
like the drummer dropped his stick or something. It just doesn't,
it looses something. So you do want to keep it fairly consistent.
You might change it say not having the percussive hits in the verses
and adding the percussive hits in the choruses to give it a bit
more groove. There's lots of ways to vary that dynamics thing but
if it's on it should usually be on and if it's off it would usually
be off. You could totally experiment with different patterns of you
want to try like quite a nice one particularly if you're going to
'push' a chord. So...
I'm changing to the C on the & after 4. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &...
And also I should actually, I just realise as I was doing it then,
if you're not changing the chord, on the & after 4, like the regular
change on the 1, quite often that & will be the open strings. Again
it's something that we talked about back in Grade 1, is that the & after 4
is often open strings if you change. Particularly with a pattern like this,
it's gonna sound fine to do that. You really won't notice.
I'm exagerating now.
Definitely doesn't sounds like "Oh he strummed all the open strings",
the old A11 with an E bass sneaking in there. But it's totally fine
to do that. So don't let that worry you if you've noticed that. Particularly
if you're practicing these things slowly it can sound a little bit
weird. If you're going...
It might kind of sound a little bit weird slowly. But once again
once it's up to tempo, it will be fine. If it is that slow, if the
song is that slow, you probably don't want the open strings and
you should have time to make the chord change. There's something
that I mentioned more than a few times on this course is this idea
of groove and making things feel good. And definitely with a pattern
like this the first few weeks of practicing this, maybe a month or
more, you gonna be thinking a lot. You're gonna be thinking about the
technique. You're going to be focussed on that. You're probably
be looking at your hand. You're going to be making sure that you
get it right. That's all cool. Once you've got the technique right,
and you feel confident with it, you want to try getting into this
zone of trying to make things feel good, you know. If you're gonna
play this kind of, you know...
I'm really looking to locking to a fault...
Sometimes I kind of imagine like a drum groove in my head.
But I want to feel nice.
It might even be I'm adding a tiny bit of shufflely kind of groove in
there and that's OK.
I have done and still do long practice sessions like that where
I'm just playing a simple strumming pattern like that and try and make
it feel as good as I can. That feeling is something the audience
will connect with. I think that's part of the thing with music and
expression and... If you're feeling good about something the people
listening will get that vibe back from it. So it's worth practicing
getting into that zone and because it's relaxed as well. A technique
like this it's easy to kind of feel very tense when you're doing
it and that's not what you want. It's got to be this, it's got to
feel relaxed and nice. It's a real key ingredient when you doing
this kind of practice. Like I said a few practice sessions just on
the technique first of all then introducing the very, very simple
strumming pattern down, hit, down, hit with the accent on the
2 and the 4, the hit on the 2 and the 4. Once you're through that
I would recommend going straight into the down, up, hit, up, down,
up, hit, up, down, up, hit. Such a great and common pattern.
Works for loads and loads of different songs. Definitely it will become,
maybe not your old faithfull, it's not the most common strumming
pattern of all times, but it's definitely up there. Really,
usefull one. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it and find plenty of
uses for this one. Hope you enjoyed this lesson.
I'll see you for plenty more very soon.
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You all take care of yourself. Bye bye.