Smoothing out strumming?

It almost sounds like your pausing ever so slightly before you start the progession over. Try moving your body to the beat while your playing kind of using it as a metronome. As always practice makes better, not perfect :D :D :D :D

Thanks art&lutherie...that's what I thought as well...it's that damn D chord! I can do it fine when practicing with just down strums but as soon as I try to add more "complicated" strumming patterns I always miss that D chord.

I'll have to try your suggestion...I was just using my foot as the metronome..

Thanks

Hi there.

It sounds to me like your brain is trying to do too much at once. Its desperately trying to get a good chord change, but also trying to get a good strum. At the moment its not 100% on either, but its very close and you should be very encouraged - I was actually surprised how good this sounded. So don't be thinking you're miles off - you aren't.

The thing you need is a bit more "flow". To get this, you need to either switch your brain off totally (i.e play by feel a bit more) or concentrate on one thing (say the chord changes) get them 100% sorted, then go back to the strumming.

you have to start trusting yourself to get the chord changes right. Forget about worrying if it will be ok.....ASSUME IT WILL BE. Just plonk them fingers down without thinking about it.

It also sounds like your strumming is a bit stiff wristed - would that sound like a reasonable description of how you feel now?

A few suggestions.

1. Practice the chord changes totally seperately from the strumming, and get them off pat, so you can literally do them in the dark. Sounds hard, but once you get past the "trust yourself" bit, its really quite easy.
2. Practice the strum pattern every day, at least 3 - 4 times a day, WITHOUT changeing chords. Just mute the strings (lightly lay your fretting hand across all 6 strings to mute the sound) and practice the strum only, until you feel like its 100%. Relax your wrist. Look at your arm, it shouldn't be jerky, it should be a nice flowing up and down motion without pauses. Read my lesson on strumming in the Lesson's section to understand this more.
3. Do try playing with ALL the lights off. It will make you "feel" the rhythm more, at the moment you are searching for it mechanically.

Let us know how you get on - rerecord yourself in 2 weeks time and compare!

Most of all RELAX a little more.

All the best

Matt

Mike, you're doing great. Listen to Matt's advice - it is excellent. Relax!

I was doing something similar last night, and kept goofing up the notes and strums. I realized that I was very tense, and my posture was terrible (slouched in a chair but hunched over the guitar at the same time.) So I stood up instead, positioned the guitar better, took a few deep breaths, and found it much easier to play right.

Hey, nice jangly retro sounds, by the way! Is that from a GP preset with your LP?

I think everyone's advice is right on the spot. I'm at a fairly similar progress level as are you, Mike. After reading your post, and listening to your recording, I tried it myself last night. My problem seemed to be that I wasn't strictly adhering to the strumming pattern, adding an extra strum or two here or there. But, you know what? It sounded ok. And that's the point I wanted make, I guess. I was kind of just "letting it flow"....I "turned my brain off", as I think Matt said. Once I did that, things got a lot smoother.

It may not have been strictly correct, but it felt good, and I think it sounded ok.

So +1 on the relaxing thing.

Thanks EVERYONE for the advice and encouragement!

Matt, thanks for the elaborate explanation! I will try your advice about playing in the dark. It's tough since I have a huge sliding glass door in my living room and it doesn't get dark until late which means I need to keep the volume down :( . I think you are right about my wrist being stiff and I should relax it more. This was the first day I did this particular strumming pattern so I might have been tense.

However, those chords I am playing I can usually change fairly easily with exception of the D chord which I can play cleanly but changing to it is challenging. It's only the D-E-G-D progression so it's not that difficult to handle. I can do it fine with other strumming patterns. Plus I tend to be more tense when strumming on the electric than on the acoustic...not sure why that is? Maybe because the electric is louder and easier to hear mistakes so I am apprehensive?

The one thing I do need to do is relax more...I am such a perfectionist that I tend to tense up when I can't get something to sound halfway decent.
Hey, nice jangly retro sounds, by the way! Is that from a GP preset with your LP?

I got that sound from the Guitar Port...but I can't take credit...I just go to their site throught the Guitar POrt browser and search for George Harrison and I got about 15 different tones to choose from...I created a similar tone on my V-Amp 2 but since I don't have a way to connect the midi to my computer yet I can't tweak the tones as much as I can with Guitar Port. It is close though...
I'm at a fairly similar progress level as are you, Mike.

Snarfy, I would like to hear you play so I have someone at my level to compare myself to. Sometimes it's discouraging to hear all the excellent guitarists here on GN showcase the music they have written. It's motivating as well but I guess I just can't get there fast enough!

Thanks

Mike,

What you may want to try is to first just use eighth note strumming until you get comfortable before you start introducing any type of syncopation.

Especially for eight days a week just straight DuDuDuDU for each chord.

Once you can strum fluently like that then you can start omitting strums here and there.

Mike,

What you may want to try is to first just use eighth note strumming until you get comfortable before you start introducing any type of syncopation.

Especially for eight days a week just straight DuDuDuDU for each chord.

Once you can strum fluently like that then you can start omitting strums here and there.

Sorry cnev...you're talking a bit over my head hear? "try is to first just use eighth note strumming until you get comfortable before you start introducing any type of syncopation." What do you mean?

Also, for Eight Days A Week I thought the strumming pattern was D DUD for the intro and D D DUDU for the verse? Did I not listen to the song right?

Thanks

Mike, I don't really have a clue as to how to provide a link to a recording. Which works out nicely, because I'm not sure I want anyone to hear me playing :lol:

having encountered your same problems, my only suggestion is the following one:

choose a chord progression you like (i.e. I use Em-G-D-C or Am-C-D-Am or even the simple E-A but it's just me) and start praticing it with a pattern you would like to know (it could also be the Du-du-du-du as someone suggested or also D-du-D-du whatever) and play it until it sound fluent. Don't forget that unless it ends with a single downstrum (like in D-D_du-D), the last beat of measure is linked to the first one of the following so you should listen an uninterrrupeted sound if you play it right. I mean if the pattern is

D D D du (which is quite used one)

the sound you should listen to is something like "Ton, Ton, Ton, tataTon, Ton, Ton, tataTon etc." with the "tataTon" is the sound made by last beat of the first measure and the first beat of the second one...

When you're confortamble with the pattern choose another one and play it with the same progression and go on and on..

I can assure you that it worked for me and after a while I started to play syncopated rhytms. To answer your question syncopation is where you miss some downstrums in the pattern, the most common one is

D du u du

when you miss the third downstrum, if play it right you should listen a sound like "Ton taTon, tatataTon, taTon, tatataTon etc. Don't forget that with syncopation the sound of some upstrums (the ones preciding the missing downstrum) becomes longer because of the missing strum. To appreciate the differnce if you had play a straight rhythm like

D du du du

with the third downstrum you'd listen a sound like

"ton, tata, tata, tataTon, tata, tata, tataTon etc.!

Matteo

Thanks matt! That clear up a LOT! I have always wondered about how to restart the strumming pattern in the next measure...

If I was doing the D DUD pattern I always restarted the next measure on the first D where it should be on the LAST D...

I'll bet that is part of my problem!

Thanks

Mike: Behringer had a link on their website to a tool that will transform POD/Guitarport patches into V-amp patches. Quite shameless of them but might be of some use to you nevertheless. :lol: 8)

You *always* start the next measure on the FIRST thing in your strum pattern.

For example, DDDDU could be:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D D D U


You start the next measure again on the very first beat, which is the first downstrum. It's a constant repetition of the same pattern, and every first beat gets the same downstrum. Matt is saying that the what sounds to you like the end of the measure is actually part of the begining of the first. So it will 'end' on D U, which is followed immediately by the first downstrum again. Once you've locked into the rhythm you'll find it very easy to continue, it's just the process of getting the pattern and how it should sound in your head.

A good excerise is playing set rhythms that emphasize a certain beat. For example, start with only downstrums. Then play only upstrokes. Then only downstrokes with a rest on the second beat. Just keep going until you've got total control over every beat.

Good luck!

AHHH! Thanks for clearing that up Arjen!

As for the GP to V-Amp converter I saw that...however I have yet to buy the cablesI need to hook the v-amp to my computer.

Mike,
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
I suggested using just eighth note strumming D u D u D u D u, because that is one of the easiest ways I found to get comfortable with strumming.

You can use any chord profression you are comfortable with and just strum Down up Down up Down up Down up for each measure.

Once you are comfortable with that rhythm you can start adding the syncopation, (removing strums).

I found this helped when I started. I would strum pretty much every song this way until I became comfortable and then started adding syncopation which tends to kind of flow naturally after awhile.