- Hey, I'm Nate Savage and I know that it can be tough
to get into strumming at first.
You know, it's one thing to just play
straight downstroke, quarter note strumming patterns
like that, that's pretty easy for most of us.
But what happens when you get into figuring out
the strumming patterns in your favorite songs
and happen to make up your own
strumming patterns on the spot.
I am going to share one extremely effective
exercise routine to help build
the coordination and ability to not only
figure out strumming patterns in your favorite songs,
but also come up with your own unique
strumming patterns when you're jamming with friends.
The first step that we need to look at
to getting this exercise down is
just a regular, eight note strumming pattern
that uses alternating down and upstrokes.
So if you've never done this before,
you may need to work on your technique a little bit,
you may need to also work on
counting out loud a little bit.
So if you have one and two and three and four and,
I'm gonna cover my strings up and not even worry
about my fretting hand here,
just downstrokes on the numbers one,
and then upstrokes on the ands.
And two and three and four and,
that's gonna be our foundational strumming pattern
for the majority of what we're gonna talk about
in this lesson.
So you need to work on that and get that down.
Now here are a couple of technique tips
for your downstrokes:
When you're playing, don't grip the pick too tightly.
If you do, it's gonna be really hard
to get through the strings,
so keep a really light, relaxed grip on it,
so when you hit the strings it kind of
gives a little bit, and then glides through the strings.
Also, don't lock your wrist and just
strum from your elbow.
That can be really tough to get through the strings also,
and makes you have to create a lot of motion
to get through the strings, and it can be
tough to keep up with faster tempos, too.
So don't lock your wrist, get really loose,
and pretend like you're just trying to
flick something off of your pinky,
that's a really good motion to think about
when you're strumming.
If you can think about that, that should
help you get your downstrokes down,
at least the technique for them really efficiently.
And you don't even have to use a pick, either,
you can use just your fingers if you like.
But the other half of the strumming that
some people struggle with is the upstrokes.
And there are two things to remember
when you're playing with upstrokes,
to help you get through the strings
a little bit better and make it easier,
as far as technique.
The first thing is, you don't have to
dig too much of the pick into the strings.
A lot of people will dig way too much of the pick
into the strings and it'll get caught.
And they'll kind of lock that wrist and
makes it even tougher to get through,
so keep a really relaxed grip, and use
just enough of the tip of the pick to
make the noise on the strings.
The second thing for upstrokes is remembering
you don't have to hit all six strings
for your upstrokes, you can go with
just the top three to five strings,
just get through those.
Keep that rotation movement in there.
This is the kind of skill you need to develop
and a basic technique you need to develop
for strumming right away, down, up, down, up,
while keeping all those strumming techniques in mind.
Think one and two and three and four,
and staying relaxed, don't lock your wrist,
don't grip the pick too tightly, think about
that flicking motion or rotational movement.
So the problem most guitar players face
when learning strumming patterns or
figuring out strumming patterns is
building the coordination to leave out
a down or an upstroke to create a new strumming pattern.
And this all comes down to something I call
the constant strumming technique,
and this can be demonstrated by doing
just downstrokes, one, two, three, four.
Now I'm still making the motion of an upstroke here,
but I'm not digging into the strings,
I have a constant strumming technique,
down-up, down-up, but I'm only doing quarter notes
with downstrokes, leaving out all the upstrokes.
And that's the heart of what we're gonna be
talking about here - leaving out any given
down or up out of that standard eight note
strumming pattern that we started with, this one.
Two and three and four and.
So the idea here is it's a really progressive
exercise, the idea here is to leave out the one,
the downstroke on the one,
throughout a measure of strumming.
The next measure, leave out the and of one,
the upstroke of the and of one,
for that measure of strumming.
The next measure, leave out the two, the downstroke
on the and of two, then next measure
leave out the and of two for that upstroke.
I'll show you what I mean here, and that
may sound confusing, but it's really progressive
and all makes sense.
What we're gonna do is start developing the control
to make whatever strumming pattern you want
if it's an eight note base strumming pattern.
So first of all, just play a regular
eight note strumming pattern, but leave out
that initial downstroke on the one.
So one and two and three and four and.
Do that again, so one and two and three and four and.
Do that a few times with a metronome,
or without a metronome,
and then the next little section of this exercise
is to put the one back in, the downstroke on one,
put that back in, and then leave out the and of one.
So one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
Next, leave out the downstroke the number two, so
one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
I'm exaggerating that, I'm making a big motion
getting my downstroke out of the way
so you can see that I'm not playing,
but it'll look this way in a real context.
One and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
Then leave out the and of two,
the upstroke on the and of two,
one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
Hopefully you're starting to see where
this is going next, to leave out the downstroke on three,
and then you would leave out the upstroke on the
and of three, you would leave out the downstroke on four,
and then the upstroke on the and of four.
This is going to build your coordination
and ability to come up with your own
strumming patterns, and you have to be
very slow and deliberate about this at first,
it may be difficult, but when you practice
it very slowly, you're building that skill
that you need to come up with
any strumming pattern on the fly.
Let's go ahead and leave the three out,
the downstroke on three.
One and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
Leave out the and of three.
One and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
Leave out the downstroke on four.
One and two and three and four and.
And then, finally, the and of four,
that upstroke, leave that out.
One and two and three and four and.
You may have to go through each step,
do a couple of measures with it very slowly,
and then move on to the next one,
but eventually you're gonna get to where
you can go through the entire series
of leaving notes out, all in one exercise like this.
One and two, three and four and
one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and.
So you can see from that basic eight note
strumming pattern that we started with,
we now have nine different strumming patterns
that we can use, they're kind of pre-programmed
to pull up any time we want.
And some of our favorite songs and things like that.
When you learn little chunks like this,
it makes it easier to recall them
whenever you need them.
And the cool thing about this type of practice
is that it doesn't take a lot of time
in each practice session, maybe five to 10 minutes per day
will go a long way if you're really consistent with this.
And if you're more of an intermediate guitar player
who's working on sixteenth note base strumming patterns,
the same thing can apply here,
it's just on sixteenth notes you're gonna be
counting one e and a two e and a
three e and a four e and a.
You can just leave out the one to start with,
one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a.
Then you can leave out the e of one,
one e and a two e and a three e and a four.
Then you can leave out the and of one,
one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a.
Then you can leave out the a of one, too,
one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a.
You can go through the exact same thing,
keep it going all the way through all the counts
for two, the two, the e of two, the and of two,
the a of two, and just keep going through
beats three and four as well,
and that's gonna build a lot of coordination
for getting your strumming together.
Once you start doing this a lot,
you're gonna be able to hear things,
like what fits in with certain patterns
in a particular song, what fits in
with the drummer, what they're playing,
or what exact strumming pattern you're hearing
in a song that you wanna learn.
The technique tips and the little exercises
we went through in this video will help
your strumming a lot, but you do need
to go out there and learn some songs.
So make a short little list, two or three songs
that you would like to learn,
and share them below this video.
I'd like to know what you're learning,
and I'm sure a lot of other people
would like some ideas for what songs
they could learn too.
Now if you need some help learning songs
or if you just need some help with strumming
or changing chords cleanly, you should check out
Acoustic Guitar Made Easy,
it's the best way to start learning guitar
and addresses all of these issues.
You can click the link below this video
for more details.
I'll see you later.
(soft whistling)
(acoustic guitar music)
(soft whistling with acoustic guitar music)