Hey, how you doing? Justin back with you.
I hope you enjoyed that video about strumming,
and you've got a better understanding of the big picture and how it works.
Now, at this point you can start making up your own strumming patterns if you like.
Probably the best way of learning new strumming patterns,
is when you encounter them in a song that you like.
Or feeling one out that kind of works really well for a song that you like.
It becomes a little bit freer.
Some songs do have a very specific strumming patterns, but most don't.
Most you can kind of apply whatever strumming pattern you really like.
One of the key things to remember is that if you add in extra strums,
it doesn't matter. It's okay, or if you leave some out, it's okay.
Now generally speaking, every 4 or 8 bars,
rhythmically something changes, particularly with drums.
They do some sort of small variation.
The drum pattern would be the same all the time,
but then every 4, 8, 12 or 16 bars, there'd be some sort of little drum fill,
where they do something slightly different.
On guitar that can work really well, as well,
just to have a little change, if you're doing,
Down, down, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, down.
Down, down, here's the 4th time, maybe go...
Down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down,
down, down, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, down,
down, up, up, up, down, up, down.
So it's the same pattern most of the time, but occasionally you pop in a variation.
That actually sounds pretty musical to do that kind of thing.
If you think about it, if you're worried about other stuff,
worried about strumming in time,
or thinking about singing, or struggle with chords,
you shouldn't be worrying about it.
It's one of those things to be aware of if you're strumming,
and you notice yourself adding in some extra strums now and then,
that's totally cool. Don't worry about it.
In fact, it can be something worth practicing
I would recommend you find a few patterns you really like to do for your practice,
and the big deal, the big thing that you wanna be working on is the relaxed arm,
and trying to get that real nice, continuous movement thing.
Okay? That really is the foundation of all of this strumming.
If you can get the nice relaxed, continuous movement of the arm,
none of the strumming patterns are gonna be very difficult.
One nice one that I think, it's the one that I worked on for this week, was going,
Down, up, up up, up, down, up, up, up...which is
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down, up, up, up, up,
down, up, up, up, down, up, down, up, up,
and just putting in some variations.
That can be a really nice thing to practice.
At this point you should be trying to
practice along with the metronome as often as you can.
Developing that sense of time of staying at the right tempo, the right speed.
It's really important.
Practicing with the metronome is the best way of doing that.
You also wanna try and get that focus on
the feeling of being relaxed with the metronome.
It's not like you're chasing it, it's not like you're anticipating it,
you just got this feeling of sitting comfortably with the click.
It's the same as the feeling you get playing with a drummer.
It's a little bit more mechanical feeling, because the metronome is very precise,
but you should still have a relaxed feeling.
It's not about it being robotic, it's about it feeling good,
and the way to do that is to relax into it.
Just work on...
You got to concentrate on the metronome, but as soon as you're kind of with it,
you wanna try and relax your whole feeling.
Your whole personality should be relaxed and trying to sit with it.
I keep using this word 'try to', but it's about not trying.
It's about just letting it happen.
It's one of those things, it's a really difficult thing to teach.
I think if you concentrate on being relaxed and trying to make it feel nice,
that's the best way to find that thing on your own,
but some of that is your own personal journey, as well.
Just a little thing, as well to start being aware of, is dynamics,
which is how hard and how soft you strum.
Now we're gonna talk about this a lot more during the course later on.
But just starting to be aware of how hard you're hitting,
the fact that you can choose to hit louder and softer when you strum,
can be a really valuable thing. A nice little exercise just to try,
we're gonna be doing more of this later on,
is just strumming normal, and then see how soft you can go.
Keeping the tempo roughly the same.
Then back to normal, and how loud you can go,
and then back to normal, and how soft you can go.
Now, a lot of this is how you hold the pick.
So, something to be aware of when you wanna play really softly,
you have to hold the pick really lightly.
If you're holding the pick lightly, it moves around more.
It's more likely to fall out of your fingers.
You'll find that with a bit of practice,
your fingers will find a way of manipulating the pick.
It'll happen by itself. Sometimes it's this middle finger that gets involved
with kind of controlling where the tip is.
Sometimes it's just a little wobble of the 1st finger and the thumb,
that kind of manipulates it.
Don't worry about it too much. You will find that it'll sort itself out,
but be aware that there's gonna be a little bit of movement there.
I often see beginners stop and have to rejig with their other hand
and move the pick, but you wanna try and learn to do it within that picking hand,
just to be able to manipulate it,
if it falls out of place from holding it too lightly.
In the previous lesson, there was also a little sheet where you could
print out and circle some of the strums to make up your own strumming patterns.
Do keep a record of the strumming patterns that you really like,
and spend a bit of time working on those.
Cos as we start approaching other things you might forget about strumming.
It's one of those things that can really help to consciously revisit.
So strumming practice is going to be 2 minutes with the metronome each session.
You could stick with one pattern or you could try different patterns.
One of the things you wanna build up is
playing the one pattern more or less continuously.
You can put those variations in if you want,
but you wanna be able keep doing the strumming pattern fairly consistently
while you think about other stuff. Learning to distract yourself a bit
in preparation for worrying about chord changes or singing,
or communicating with the band or whatever.
So you do want the strumming thing to become automated.