Did I miss something?

Did they just learn chord changes for a year or 2 then just wake up and say Idea OHHHHH I got it. now i can strum any song.

Well thats basically what happened to me. I struggled to learn songs, struggled to get "the correct" strumming pattern. Learning many of the songs on this site helped a lot. Once I had down all of the basic techniques, I started to hear what the guitarist was doing. My listening skills increased dramatically in the first two years. Strumming got a whole lot easier all of a sudden. So did fingerpicking actually. It even became relatively easy to strumm a song that was fingerpicked and vise versa. I know that is not what you want to hear but that is what happened to me. Incidentally I no longer try for "the correct strumming pattern", I get the gist of a song and it usually gets closer to the original as time passes.

Your friends should be able to speed up the process somewhat though. Watch and listen to what they do. There are a lot of subleties to strumming that isn't obvious to a begginer. If your friends aren't the teaching types, try some lessons.

keep at it

Same here, it just seemed to flow naturally from me as I got the groove from the song. Those up-down strum patterns that website throw out never made sense or helped me at all.

It's just a matter of preference and natural flow, I guess, deciding which way to learn.

Ditto. I think the turning point comes when you get the hang of thinking about the strumming as a whole, rather than individual strums strung together. When I'm strumming, I'm not thinking "up down up down up down up down", I'm thinking "accent................accent.............." if you see what I mean. Get the first beat of each bar right and strumming relaxedly and evenly takes care of the others.

Ditto. I think the turning point comes when you get the hang of thinking about the strumming as a whole, rather than individual strums strung together. When I'm strumming, I'm not thinking "up down up down up down up down", I'm thinking "accent................accent.............." if you see what I mean. Get the first beat of each bar right and strumming relaxedly and evenly takes care of the others.

Double ditto. For me, happens when your not thinking about it. Also agree that it gets closer to the original the longer I play it but I dont really set out to play it strum for strum like the original.

Jim

came naturally. I played rhythm before I had a guitar. I used to air guitar to my LPs in my teenage bedroom. eventually I got a guitar. the transition was seamless. :)

Double double ditto here!

Strumming was the easiest part of learning guitar got me, as I've always had a good sense of rythm.

With practice it wil come. With regard to learning new songs, once you "know" how to strum without thinking about it, you can tell how to strum a song to get the similar sound, without really having to make much concious thought about it.

As for
Did they just learn chord changes for a year or 2 then just wake up and say OHHHHH I got it. now i can strum any song.

thats a *little* exagerrated, but you might be suprised how often you can spend 3 hours trying to play something, fail at it, go to bed, get up in the morning and play it first time you try. It's a little weird when it happens, but it really does! (Happened to me this morning actually!) ((And there is a logical reason for it, it's to do with how the brain works))

Keep practicing, get a metronome to help your timing if that's whats causing problems, take it slow, and you'll get there!

Pete

((And there is a logical reason for it, it's to do with how the brain works))
Indeed, REM sleep fine-tunes and cements what you've learned during the day - works with any kind of learning too.

Another point that just came to me - strumming is one of those things that is hindered if you slow it down too much. Slowing down a little is helpful for all the usual reasons, but if you slow it down too much you're not actually using the muscles in the same way as you do when you're strumming normally.

(Guesswork at the techie bit coming up, feel free to ignore and/or refute :wink:): When you're strumming normally for the second half of each up or down movement you're using your muscles to slow down your arm, but when you do it too slowly you're using them to hold your arm in a position more than to move it, and you don't do any 'braking' the end of the stroke. It's like accelerating in a car and then braking compared to just rolling down the road - you're staring with more effort than is required to move to the end position to get the speed right, and then doing more work at the end to stop in time.

With me, I think it just came naturally over a period of time....I still have trouble tabbing out strumming patterns. But I always found that listening to music helped, especially concentrating on the rhythm guitar....I seemed to be able to see and hear what the guitarist was playing in my head.

I remember an article Greybeard wrote a while back about visualising target chords, where you see in your mind's eye the chord you're playing and the chord you're moving to....I kind of see strumming patterns the same way...

:D :D :D

Vic

I think it does help to have someone show you the basics. I mean strumming seems to make sense but when it came to doing it I was struggling a bit. I had my instructor show me a thing or two. Peter Vogl has some free videos and I downloaded his acoustic rock method dvd. It has a good strumming techniques section. It is for beginner. I've been playing for 9 months or so and it was worth the $10 I paid for the progressions and strumming section.

You can view some free videos here:
http://www.freeguitarvideos.com/guitar_lessons_beginner.html