Rhythm Guitar: Strumming

So you know how to strum, right?

Well, do you? Do you ever find that your strumming hand gets “out of time” or certain rhythms just feel awkward to play? It might just be that your strumming technique needs working on…

I have talked about the importance of the strumming hand before, and how important it is- at least as equal as the fretting hand, but nobody seems to pay it much attention! So, let’s start from the basics (feel free to skip this, but you never know what you might be missing…):

How to Strum

The answer to this may seem easy: you hit the pick against the strings…and you’d be right. It is a little more involved though, I mean: how are you holding the pick? What angle are you hitting it against the strings? Which way are you strumming?

That last question “which way are you strumming?” is worthy or more attention. When many people first start out they’ll naturally do downstrokes (moving the pick down across the strings). Some players of rock, metal and/or punk still only use downstrokes- but the downstroke can only take you so far.

How fast can you downpick? I mean, think about this: every time you strum downwards, your hand and arm need to come back up past the strings again…doing nothing…and that’s inefficient right there! A more efficient technique would be to strum the strings again on the way up (that way you only have to move your arm half as fast…). So, when we strum, we try to alternate with down and upstrokes.

Putting Power Behind It

You might notice, after playing alternate down and up strums, that you can put a lot more power behind the downstrokes than you can the upstrokes. It’s almost like you can put more weight into them. This is normal, and it’s why we generally start on downstrokes and use those to play notes that fall on the beat (so that they are slightly more emphasised).

Strumming Examples

For example, this would be played with all downstrokes (because each note is exactly on the beat):

…and this one would be alternate down and up strokes (starting with a downstroke), because one note is on the first beat (downstroke), then the next is in between (upstroke), then the next is on the second beat (downstroke again)…you get the idea…

Following the exact same logic, this last example will be entirely upstrokes. The little wiggly symbol before each note is a rest- it tells you to play nothing! So on each beat here, we play nothing and then in between the beats we strum the chords- using upstrokes.

Why do we have to play upstrokes? Yes, you are essentially “strumming the air” on each beat, but there is logic to it. Most of the time you’ll have a combination of notes on the beat and off the beat and if you break the pattern you’re much more likely to lose the groove than if you just keep that rhythm going (down up down up down up down…).

If you want, you can play through the examples above to a metronome as strumming exercises. It’ll definitely help your rhythm playing and timing no end!

Any questions, please comment below.
Rob.

May 17, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Exercises, Guitar Technique and Exercises, Rhythm Guitar | No comments