If you’re a beginner then you need this Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement lesson from Guitar Control. Instructor Darrin Goodman breaks it all down with step-by-step video instruction and free included tabs.
Overview
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement video lesson. Today I want to show you some beginner strumming patterns. So I’m going to do is just go over some basic fundamentals and stuff for strumming and some universal patterns Beginner for Easy Improvement that are used in a lot of songs and can also be used in lieu of other strumming patterns that are maybe more complicated and more advanced than you’re ready to do at this time so be sure to click on the link down below so you can get the tabs and you’ll be able to follow along with Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement.
The Universal Strum
All right so the first Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement pattern that I want to go over I just call this the universal strum because you can do this for just about any song you can think of. Even if it’s not the right strum you can still kind of get your way through it by using this pattern. So the strumming pattern takes up an entire measure, so actually one thing I guess maybe we should look at before we do this is we should look at some counting fundamentals. So if you’ve got your metronome going and it’s a steady one two three four and then you’re tapping your foot in one two three four, so when you’re strumming off of that you could do simple quarter note strums. So you know you’re just one two three four one two three four like that, but that’s not very exciting, but if you’re really just starting out that’s a good way to do it just to kind of get your way through so you can work on your chord transitions.
So another one would be, so that was quarter notes where the strum is on each beat, but then you’ve got the space between the beats which what they call the upbeat or the offbeat. So if you’ve got your metronome going, so it’s one and two and, so you say and in between, so one and two and three and four and so that might be like one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four.
So as a general rule the quarter notes are going to be on the down stroke and the eighth notes are going to be on the upstroke, but that’s not 100 percent of the time so, for this universal Beginner Strumming pattern for Easy Improvement we’re going to do a the first strum is a down and it’s going to be a half note, so it actually gets two beats, so you got one two and then on three you do another down stroke so it’s one two three, or excuse me, one two three four, so you do a half note one two and then a quarter note three and then two eighth notes four and that upstroke on the and is where you change chords. So here one two three four and one two three four so as soon as you’re ready to do that down stroke after the upstroke on the end of four it’s on the downbeat of one and that’s where you’d be changing chords.
Okay so that is like I said a very useful, simple strum that you can play a lot of songs right out of the gate with this Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement.
More Advanced Strumming
So another Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement pattern that’s a pretty universal strum pattern, but a little bit more complicated. We’ve got we’re going to do one and then we let that ring out for the downbeat of two, one two and then on the end of two we do an upstroke, one two and four and. So that upstroke that we do here one two and we’re doing that upstroke on the and of two, but it’s also a quarter note, so it’s actually taking the downbeat of three and then on the and of three we do and four and, so one two and three four and down down up up down up and then on the next down could be where a chord change is if it’s a whole measure, so one two and three four and one two and three four and one two and three four one two and three four.
So that Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement is pretty common too, I mean like there’s lots of songs that have that in there, so it’s just a way that you can kind of just step up from you know you’re starting out, you’re just like one two three four to change it to one.
Strumming Technique
Okay, so one other thing I want to talk about a little bit is about the strumming technique itself for Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement. So I see a lot of people and they’re strumming and their arm is very rigid and all the movement comes from their elbow. It’s much simpler and easier to be articulate if you do it more with your wrist. So with your guitar pick you want to be holding it so the point of the pick is coming off of the side of your thumb at a 90 degree angle, you know the pointy part of the pick, and you want just enough of it protruding that when you strum the flesh on your hand doesn’t actually hit the strings but you want to be very close and then I take just this part of my arm right here and rest it like on this. This electric has this little bit of a bevel right there that I can rest on, if you’re playing an acoustic it’s usually like the crook your arm will sit on the back bout, then you want your arm to be straight so you’re just past the first string and then reach up with your wrist. So when I’m strumming there’s still a little bit of movement in my elbow, but it’s the majority of it is in my wrist rather than my whole arm. It might take a little bit of getting used to but it’s much easier in the long run and it just sounds smoother and you won’t get nearly as fatigued because you’re not moving your whole arm, just to be the laziest guitar player you can with the least amount of effort, you just don’t want there to be a lot of stress in your arm, you want it to be more relaxed when you’re playing; when you’re strumming it’s just easier to make it smooth and just have a better flow to it for Beginner Strumming pattern for Easy Improvement.
Alright so I hope you found that useful and informative. If you like the video Beginner Strumming for Easy Improvement be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if there’s something you’d like to see either myself or one of the other instructors at GuitarControl.com doing a future lesson. Anyway that is all I got for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
