Hey. How you doing? Justin here.
Today I'm gonna talk about your very first strumming pattern.
Which is simply strumming on the 1.
Now, all of the music that we're looking out
at the early stages of the Beginners Course is in 4/4 time.
That means it's got 4 beats in the bar.
I'm sure you've heard before or seen at the gig people going
"1,2. 1,2,3,4." And then the music starts. Maybe you wonder why they count to 4.
It's usually because it's 4 beats in the bar. There are other time signatures,
where there's different amounts of beats in the bar, but 4/4 time,
or 4 beats in the bar, is the most common.
Now, the general idea here is that you wanna learn to count along.
Eventually we're gonna be taping our foot along, as well.
But you wanna be first of all thinking just about this counting 1...2...3...4...
1...2...3...4... Get use to being able to count it. I know it seems silly,
but have a go at doing that first.
It might feel a little bit odd if you're used to counting to 10.
And then what you wanna be doing is practicing strumming only on the 1.
So get it say your D chord up and you're gonna strum down on 1 and count the rest.
So you're gonna go... 1, 2, 3 ,4.
1, 2, 3 ,4.
Can you see that my arm is moving for all of the rest of the beats?
That's the ideal....2,3,4.
Even though I'm actually not strumming.
I'm still keeping my arm moving....2,3,4.
1,2,3,4.
I don't think many beginners are gonna be able
to strum on 1 and keep the hand moving for the rest of the time.
I couldn't do that really when I was learning my left-handed stuff.
Too difficult.
But you'll find through the course I'm trying
to give you the ideal option as well, 'cause some people will be ready for it.
You might do it and be like "Yeah, I'm cool with this.
I can move my hand down as I'm counting along. I'm totally hip with that."
In which case I want you to do it.
For me it was a little bit more cumbersome than that.
I didn't feel like a could do that. I was more worried about the chord changes,
which is the next thing coming up.
Even getting used to the strumming down going 1,2,3,4.
Chord change. 1,2,3,4.
Chord change. 1,2... That would be amazing if you can get to that point.
For most beginners it's gonna be more like 1,2,3...4...
get the fingers in... 2,3,4...
That's OK! Don't worry about it! It's OK not to be OK at this stuff.
Especially in your first week or first couple of weeks.
It's gonna be a real struggle and that's totally cool. Be cool with that. OK?
Really, really important at this stage that you get used to that idea.
The reason that I wanna talk about this strumming on 1
is particularly when you go to play a song. Even if it's real slow.
At the early stages we just wanna be trying to get that strum on beat 1.
Not strumming on beat 2 or beat 4,
but trying to count and get used to the idea of strumming on beat 1.
So we're going... 1,2,3,4. Chord change.
1,2,3,4. Chord change. 1...
So we're trying to get the chord change in time to be able to strum the 1 again.
Even if it means starting the change immediately after playing,
so going 1,2,3,4.
1,2,3,4.
1... OK? The strum on the 1 is the key thing.
So if you have to leave the chord early,
if you chord change is quite slow and you have to leave early to get that,
that's OK. The thing you're aiming for is getting that strum on beat 1.
Particularly when you're play a song
or you're playing along with a backing track kind of thing,
using my app the Beginner Song Course app,
you wanna be aiming to try and get your strum on 1.
In the first week that's going to be very difficult. Do your best.
Try and get that strum on 1.
But if you only get to strum every 4 times the chord changes,
'cause the chords changes are so slow, that's OK too.
Particularly when you start playing songs
there's some other challenges that I'm gonna talk about in the following video,
but... the key thing that I wanted to mention is this counting to 4,
just going 1,2,3,4, and putting a strum on the first beat.