This next one easy bass strum is the name is pretty obvious, it's a bass strum and
it's fairly easy. It's used in a lot of easy- going country, pop, folk, country pop
rock kind of sound faster when you're using it for country rock but it's also a good
basis for more elaborate strums. It has another use, it'll help you to
learn the right bass note for the chords and get used to aiming your pick in
there in the right area for the base note so let's start out with this basic
strum on the G chord. I'm using a 4 finger G.
So you're gonna hit the base note for G sixth string third fret and then strum,
base note and strum. Now for the counting, it would be 1 2 3
4. Now remember that we talked about the upbeats would be AND but we're not
doing any AND's yet. You could fancy up the strum a little bit by going 1 2 and 3 and 4
4 and, and so on. For now we're gonna stick to that basic base strum, base strum, and feel
free anytime to start trying to add some upbeats in there. So practice with me
the strum a little bit then we're gonna add some new chords because the point of
this, is to show you the base notes for different chords. So let's start with the
G, 6th string.
Go ahead and play with me. Ready, go. Base
strum. That's four beats 1 2 3 4 - 1 2 3 4 Let's add a new chord. I'm gonna go with
E minor and a form we've used before. It's actually A minor 7, looks like
that and we'll use the sixteenth of a bass note but it's an open string now so
it's an open E note actually. Base, strum base, strum. Go and just try it and see what it sounds like. Ready, go.
Third chord, we'll go to a C and again it's a chord we've done. This form of the
C chord looks just like the G only moved over one string. Bass notes on the fifth
string now.
Try that. Ready, go. Base, strum, base, strum, one more - that's 2 measures.
Yeah. Now for the D chord and we're gonna use the 4 string for that base note.
Go ahead and play with me - fourth string. The best you can. Don't worry if you hit another
string. You'll get it. It takes practice. Again, base, strum, base strum.
So you want to practice each of these chords separate a little bit just
you know the sixth string is actually the easy ones. It gets harder as you get
in there cause you're gonna aim your pick to get in there to the
fifth string but like anything else the more you do it, it just becomes a habit
and gets easier. Now I'm going to show you the exercise I want you to practice.
First practice the individual chords and put a little more attention on the C and
the D. The G and the E minor come fairly easy. Now we're gonna do one chord
one full strum so base, strum, base, strum that's one strum going on to the
E minor bass, strum right then change to C. One strum per
chord G, E minor, C and then D and then you start over. Try with me. We'll go
really slow. Ready, play - sixth string
that's one full measure. Let's go onto the E minor now. Ready, go sixth string base note.
Good.
Now the C, 5th string bass note. Good and onto the D 4th string bass note.
Let's start over G, ready go.
Going to E minor
to the C now. Hit it
and the D
and again G sixth string. E minor,
the C that's the fifth string and the D. Okay
very good.