Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Today I wanna talk a little bit about strumming development,
because we've covered a lot of ground when it comes to strumming.
Mainly because I taught you the secret, which is that if you keep your hand moving
you can strum almost any strums that you want in a pattern,
and it's gonna sound pretty cool.
You'll find there are some strumming patterns that would still feel
pretty awkward, and a lot that you would struggle to apply to songs,
but that's kinda normal.
But the biggest deal with strumming, is making it feel nice, is being relaxed.
And for most beginners, that's the hardest thing.
For me and the left-handed journey, it's the hardest thing.
My arm feels tense when I'm trying to strum, and it just...
What I'm searching for when I'm practicing,
is making it feel loose and relaxed. That's pretty much the only thing
I'm really concerned with when I'm doing lefty practice.
Okay? When I'm strumming with this hand, it just happens automatically.
This hand is always loose and relaxed. It knows that that's its gig.
But for many beginners, that's one of the hardest parts, is to be relaxed.
It's also really easy for me to say, and really difficult for you to do,
because you're struggling with it, well some of you will be struggling.
If you're struggling with strumming, you'll find the arm gets really tense,
cos you get worried and nervous about it,
and that, in effect, makes it a lot worse.
So, one of the things I would really strongly recommend
that you work on when it comes to strumming,
is playing to a metronome, picking a pattern that you find really simple,
and trying to play it over and over again, until it feels nice,
and make yourself feel good, when you're doing it.
Let's just pick it on the C chord.
Nice, old faithful. Down, down, up , up, down pattern,
I haven't got a metronome to hand, so I'll just have to do it without one.
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There's the pattern.
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Now, I'm really trying to feel relaxed in my shoulders, in my mind, everywhere.
It's not...I'm not trying to think like, 1, 2 and 3 and 4,
1, 2 and 3 and 4, 1, 2 and 3 and 4,
cos then it feels all jerky and... you can feel it, right?
If I do it like that.
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It's just...uhh, it's all yucky!
It wants to have this...
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It needs to be so relaxed and chilled.
It really does, that's what you're aiming for.
It's like, sometimes my hand just feels like it's falling off,
but it's trying to keep that continuous motion and just...
really feel good. Sorry, my shoe is squeaking on my guitar cable.
One of the things that I find when I'm practicing something more difficult,
technically challenging, but I still want it to feel good,
is I try and deliberately force myself to smile and think happy thoughts.
I know this sounds like funny, hippy, hurdy gurdy stuff,
but it's almost like this 'fake it till you make it' thing
can really help. If you're struggling a bit to make it relaxed...smile.
I probably look like a real idiot trying to smile here.
And trying to think like that time you had a great holiday in Barbados,
and you're, you know, just really like...
trying to get yourself in a real happy place,
and trying to get your whole feeling like that.
This nice, relaxed, comfort, you know, old pair of slippers...
it just feels really good.
You'd have to try and find that in yourself, in the way that you play.
When people hear you playing like that, they will feel it.
And that's one of the most important things,
cos we generally wanna hear music that makes us feel good.
So the people playing it have to feel good too.
That's not always the case. I know in some music like
if you're playing really angry music then the music wants to be feeling angry,
therefore you wanna feel angry when you play it.
It needs to be expressed that way.
A lot of it's depending on what you wanna play.
More times than not, you wanna feel good,
or you wanna feel sad. In any of those you wanna feel relaxed in.
You wanna feel comfortable in your skin, and comfortable in what you're doing.
Some of that's practice, when you just started out,
and something's technically complicated, it'll be real difficult to relax.
Really, really difficult.
But at this point on your journey,
you probably are starting to feel a bit more relaxed,
at least with it conceptually.
So now is the time to really start to dig in, to try and make things relaxed.
Just...
pick a pattern...
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and then make it feel good.
Chords don't really matter.
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You wanna be thinking about all of that stuff we talked about,
about putting in minor variations in the strumming, that sort of stuff,
can become part of that.
But just playing, on your own and not thinking about anything else
but making it feel good, is valuable practice.
I know it might feel like,
"Oh I'd be better off doing it with a metronome, or learning a new pattern",
but if you can only play 3 or 4 patterns, but you play them really well,
and they're really relaxed, and they really feel good,
and they work great when you're playing your songs,
that's much better than studiously studying hundreds of strumming patterns,
and not really being able to use them effectively.
It's much more about getting into the feel of it.
Music really is a feeling thing.
Yes, there's some technical stuff that we got to do,
but it's the feeling that you bring to it, that's the really important part.
That's the part that we connect with as humans.
It's this magical thing that makes us feel happy, sad, relaxed or angry.
That's what we're trying to tap into.
And getting that relaxed feeling, is a really great first step.
You might wanna tap into some other emotions down the line,
but to start off with, for this Beginner Grade 1,
just learning to relax with it would be a huge step,
and it'll teach you a whole lot.