Hey there fellow guitar people, I’ve gotta cool funk strumming for you and you wouldn't
even need a pick. I almost forgot, I’m Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success
and if you haven't already subscribed go ahead and do that now so do miss a thing. Let’s do this.
Okay let's start with the basic technique. If any of this technique stuff seems to be quickly,
I have a whole video that explains in much more detail and I’ll put a link to that at the end.
So the basic motion is down with the fingers and up with the thumb. I’m down with the outside of my
fingers brushing in the strings and then up with the thumb. Again, brush it. Hands relaxed and I’m
twisting slightly. There’s a little bit of motion of my elbow and I’m twisting slightly . You don't
want big motion like this. There’s too much space to get back on time so there’s a little motion and
a little motion together. Watch slowly for a minute. Down and a twitch and up, down and up.
Try it with me without a chord for now. Down, twist slightly up.
Down and up. Now I’ll make a chord - an A minor open chord, down, up, down, up. Now you don’t
wanna dig in too much because it’ll sound harsh . You wanna brush the strings and then on the
way up. You see it's a light brush. It looks like anything else it takes lots of practice.
Now the next technique we're using is a mute in the left hand. This is different than the
palm mute where you’re using your right hand. The left hand you mute by just releasing the tension.
It works best with bar chords though it can be adjusted to open chords. We're gonna do it on a
bar chord. So here's the mute technique. I strum and now I'm going to strum with the mute. I've
just released tension and it makes that sound. So strum and then mute so try this with me.
First of all make the chords sound. Now make the mute sound just release slightly
and my left hand's still touching the strings. I'm just releasing.
Now I'm going to press down there's the chord and now release press down and release.
Now that basic motion with my right hand is just down up down up and every once in a while I'm
muting and that's what makes the rhythm. So here's a simple exercise to practice the basic technique
before you start adding it into the strum. We're going to go down, up ringing and then down up
muting. Release the left hand. So we're practicing muting and releasing while strumming up and down.
And the motion is constantly up and down so that's going to stay the same. Try it with me now. So
it's going to be down, up. You let it ring. Now mute down, up. Do it with me. Down, up, mute.
By the way I'm making an A minor in my left hand, A minor bar chord. Go. Down, up.
Now a little faster. Ah, try with me. Come on. You got this. Ready, go.
Down, up, mute, down, up, mute, and down, up. Okay, pretty good.
Okay now we're ready to put the technique together with the right and left hand into a strum pattern.
The strum pattern is going to alternate between letting the strings ring and muting them. We're
going to let the strings ring every one and a half beats. So what that means for practical purposes
is that sometimes the strings will ring when your strum is going down and then alternately it'll
ring when your strum is going up. So listen for a minute, here's what it sounds like.
Now a couple of things first of all that rhythm pattern is made with my left hand, the muting
part. The right hand is doing the exact same thing just going up and down every time. And you'll
notice at the very end of the pattern, I did a couple up and downs without letting the strings
ring. I was getting back on the beat to start the whole pattern over again so it's like this down,
up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down. So in total there's five times that I'm unmuting the
strings or letting them ring 1 2 3 4 5 and I start over 1 2 3 4 5 - 1 2 3 4 5 - 1 2 3 4 5.
By the way there's a couple ways I could think about that. One way is to actually say which
beats or which part of the beat the strum is ringing on and I'll put some of that in the notes
but for now I'm gonna choose to just keep track of it by alternating one time down,
one time up, one time down until I get to five and then start over. So try it
with me very slowly right now and I'll stop after one time through.
Here we go 1 2 ready go 1 2 3 4 5 that was one whole pattern. Let's try that again even a little
bit slower. So just to be clear I'm alternating the first time I go down and thenIi let it ring on
the way up and next time's going to be down and my right hand is just keep going down up down up. Try
just a little bit with me. We'll go even a little slower. Here we go ready, hit it. Start down,
up, down. Now ring, up. Now it's going to ring on the way down. Down and then up. Last one,
down. Now no ring so I can start over. This is the one beat and two and three
and four and one and two and three and four and. Let's try it a little bit faster and I'm just
gonna count how many times you let it ring. This is not the beat right now. Ready, hit it. Down2
3 4 5 and then start over. Let's do it again. Hit, up, hit, hit,
hit, one more hit and then we're gonna start over and we'll start over on the downbeat.
I'm gonna start with an A7. Here goes.
As I mentioned earlier I made a whole video which goes into more detail
about the techniques with the right hand so I'm going to put a link to that here at the end and
make sure and watch that. It'll help clear things up if this is a new technique for you.
Hey and give me a thumbs up if you appreciate what I’m trying to do here and before you go, I
appreciate it if you take just a minute and leave me a comment. Let me know how this was for you.
Was this difficult, easy, somewhere in between and secondly let me know if there's a video
that you'd like me to make that you think would help you and others. I'll see you again soon.
Bye.