Question on Strumming.

Hi David, and welcome to Guitar Noise. :D

First of all, do not feel alone, this is probably the most common problem asked about here. Strumming well is something that gives every guitarist trouble at first. You will get it with a little practice.

I am not a teacher, but I have been playing a long time. I think there are some things you can do to improve your strumming.

1) Start with simple downstrokes. Don't try to alternate down and up to start. Simply strum all downstrokes. You say you miss strings? Try simply dragging (also called raking) the pick across the strings. Go slow and try to develop a slow, but consistent down-strum. Start with a simple quarter note strum--- One, Two, Three, Four. Then increase speed to eighth notes-- One & Two & Three & Four &. As you get comfortable with the downstrum, slowly speed up.

2) Once you get downstrums down, work on alternating down up. You might just throw one upstroke in to begin with,

One, two, three &, four, One, two, three &, four, etc....

Again, practice for consistency. If you have a drum machine or metronome, set it to a fairly slow speed like 60 beats per minute. Practice changing a few chords back and forth in time to the metronome. Once you learn to strum well at a slow speed, gradually speed up.

Learn to relax. Strumming is actually pretty easy once you get it, you will wonder why it gave you a problem. Learn to relax and be limber. Pay attention to stress in your hands of course, but also your whole body. See if you are holding your breath for instance. When you find you are tense, RELAX. :D

Keep your hands close to the strings. Sometimes when you see someone playing guitar it looks like they are just flailing away. But try to keep your hands close to the strings and use minimal motion.

Hold your pick in the middle. It is often easy to strum holding a pick on it's outer edge, but you have little control this way. If you have to go from strumming to picking individual notes you will have difficulty with accuracy. So choke up a little on the pick. You will have to learn to use a lighter touch this way, but you will have far more control and accuracy.

I am sure some of the teachers here can give you additional advice.

Lastly, don't give up, in a few short months strumming will seem easy. Regular practice is the key to improvement. :D

Hi David,

Wes answered you but I already wrote the message so I'm posting it in any case. I hope it helps.

Sorry, I don't understand your first question. When strumming you must play only some strings depending on the chord you are playing. Thus, for example, sometimes you only play from the 4th to the 1st, sometimes you you play from the 6th to the 4th and sometimes you must play the six strings.

You will hear this several times but it is a question of practice.

On buzzing strings. Where do you perceive the noise? Probably you are not applying enough pressure with your fingers. But also it could be that the guitar wasn't adjusted correctly.

I can only think - for the E chord example - that maybe you're hitting the strings too hard with a tensed hand, and that hand's almost bouncing up off the bottom E string. Try and relax your hand, and to almost glide through the strings. If you need to, slow your strumming down to the point where you're arpeggiating the chord, ie playing the strings so they sound individually rather than together. Then try speeding up gradually.

The buzzing noise you describe could be one of several things - it could be that the action's too low on your guitar, or it could simply be that you haven't yet mastered the art of holding the strings down with the correct pressure. Too much, your hand will ache before long - too little, you'll get that rattle or buzz. Try holding down a chord and pick each note individually - do they all ring out cleanly? If not, try adjusting your hand and/or finger positioning until they do.

Practise, and getting used to the guitar, sometimes alleviates this kind of problem - hopefully, you'll look back in a few weeks and wonder why you were worried.

:D :D :D

Vic

For example if I'm trying to play an E chord where i'm strumming all strings when my hand comes down i'll strike the thickest string but appear to miss the strings in the middle out or the bottom string etc. I'm sure you get the picture.

I think I know what you're doing... I'm just 6 months into learning, and I do it too.

I think your hand is swinging "out" from the guitar body and not down. I have to be particularly careful that I'm not getting sloppy. I do it on upstrokes and downstrokes. I also do it when I am being "shy" when playing. In other words, I hit the strings too lightly. It also happens when I try to play too fast. Take your time, concentrate on forming the chord properly and make it ring.

I don't know about you, but I want to be an excellent player, and I wanted it yesterday. :lol:
Also when I play some chords I get a buzzing noise off the strings, is this because the guitar is not correctly tuned? or are my fingers too close to the frets?

Happens to me too. Make sure your fingers are placed properly, you're putting the right pressure, and your finger is not touching an adjacent string. I have a tendency to make the high strings "twang". I remind myself I'm not Ravi Shankar, and this is not a sitar. :lol:

The experienced guys always keep saying it's practice... it's experience... and I believe them.

Hello David P, and welcome to Guitar Noise.

I'm a beginner (don't go by my join date, I gave up after a few short months back then in 2005...) I picked the guitar back up exactly 6 weeks ago today. What they say up above is all true.

I definitely hear you about both the hitting of the wrong strings and the strumming as well as the fret buzz. Just 6 weeks, heck, just a few weeks ago, I was there with all of what you describe.

You will get it with practice, and it doesn't even take a lot of practice. I picked up and restrung my guitar, started just learning the chords, of which I remembered about half of the open chords from my first try in 2005. I would have the chords for a simple 3 chord song, and try to put an interesting strum to it and my hands would go all stupid on me, I mean way stupid. I knew the chords, could move between them with only a slight pause, yet trying to do more than 4 down strums and neither hand would coordinate to make any pleasant sound out of my guitar.

Just relax, don't worry too much about the strumming right now. Learn the open chord shapes. Start to learn to switch between them while using all down strums. When you want to start to tackle strumming, don't worry at first about changing chords. Pick a chord, hold that, and add a little pattern to your strumming. After smoothing out that strum, try changing chords, just between 2 at first. Add a 3rd chord after a bit. Just take little baby steps and it all falls into play for you in it's own time.

I've been extremely busy with working on the house after work. By the time I'm coming in from that, the kids are in bed and I can't mess around with the guitar. Hence, it was sitting for about a week. Before I laid it down, I had looked at Guns n Roses' Patience (In the Easy Song Database here: http://forums.guitarnoise.com/viewtopic.php?t=17584 ). I knew the chord shapes, could do the strum pattern, but couldn't do it smooth with strumming and switching the chords. After a week of working on the house and not having time with my guitar, I found myself inside while it rained. I picked up the guitar and promptly started playing the song as if I had been practicing the entire time. My chord changes were smooth, my strum pattern was smooth, and I was able to change the strum pattern between the verse and chorus just fine.

Don't fret about it right now (excuse the pun, not intended :D). With a bit of practice, I can tell you it will come and you will wonder why you couldn't do it before. Once that happens, you have motivation to move on to other stuff. That's how I see learning the guitar to work. It seems impossible, something clicks and you get it and it's so easy, and you are motivated to do and learn more.

As for the fret buzz, I also had this just a few short weeks ago. My guitar was buzzing all over the place. But my finger tips are beginning to callus over and the fret buzz goes away. That is if it isn't something with the guitar such as the action as is stated up above. But it is a good chance that it is just your fingertips as they are soft and you tend to have to hold the strings down harder until the fingertips begin to callus (that spelling just doesn't look right...)

Good luck and keep playing. That first moment when you smack yourself in the side of the head and think, "Ah! That's what it's all about!" makes it all worth while. Six weeks ago, playing anything that resembled music looked to be impossible to me. I'm now moving on to that stinkin F chord, have 3 other songs I'm learning through, have Patience that I can play through and am adding learning some of the soloing through it. It's really a fun journey so far, even this early in the game for me.

If you think hitting the correct strings and strumming is hard, I just tried to sing while playing Patience since I know all the words without needing to read them. Wow, both of my hands went all stupid on me again and I sounded like my 4 and 7 year olds when they get a hold of the guitar, hehehe. :mrgreen:

In addition to the excellent advice provided above, you may want to check out David Hodge's podcasts which describes various strumming patterns and enhancements that you may be interested in. Check out the URL and start at Podcast #1

https://www.guitarnoise.com/blog/podcasts/

They are well worth the effort