Strumming

Go as slowly as you need to go! If you need to play at 30-40 bpm, that's perfectly fine! The idea behind going slow is to get your fingers used to making those chord changes and to make them as fluidly as possible. Then, gradually increase your speed, by 10 or 20 bpms, after you have successfully played it at the slower speed. Eventually, you will increase your speed until you can play at 120 bpm or better!

Saying 60 bpm is fast makes me wonder if you aren't counting it as 120 bpm?!?!

I've done that without realizing it. Just a heads up.

One thing I have encountered (I'm a bit of a beginner myself) when first starting practice with the metronome is that at first, too slow actually posed its own difficulties - I'd end up focusing too much on the timing and screwing up the fingering. For instance, I'd screw up a chord change at 76 BPM, but at like 100 I might be able to do the same chord change no problem because I'm more used to songs at that pace. For a little while, I had to consciously say, "ok, do the fingering at a comfortable pace and THEN worry about timing the strum." After a little bit of practice it became a non-issue.

The advice of "go slow, get it right, then increase tempo" seems to be everywhere on this site and on these forums. Tough to follow sometimes, but so far seems to work great for me... Good luck!

Saying 60 bpm is fast makes me wonder if you aren't counting it as 120 bpm?!?!

I've done that without realizing it. Just a heads up.

I'm not saying 60BPM is fast, what I'm saying is it seems quicker than In first thought.

Interesting you should mention this. That's what I thought. Then I opened a piece of sequencing software, set the tempo to 60BPM with a slow simple drum beat and then compared it to the metronome. (software based). I was hoping I had counted it wrong but I don't think I did BUT just to make absolutely sure: OK. You have a metronome ticking away. Mine is software based with a nice picture of it's arm swinging from side to side. With each movement of it's arm you hear a tick, each tick is one beat right? - So for one bar the arm of the metronome swings from:

left to right, from left to right
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 =1 bar = 4 audible tick on the metronome.

OK. You have a metronome ticking away. Mine is software based with a nice picture of it's arm swinging from side to side. With each movement of it's arm you hear a tick, each tick is one beat right?

Should be, I think. BPM means "beats per minute", so 60 would be exactly 1 second apart, shouldn't be too hard to tell if it's 1 second or a half second.

hi all

which speed to pratice it depends which pattern you're playing! Let's say that the more notes you play each beat the slower is the speed to start.

I mean if you're playing quavers at 60 bpm it sounds like a funeral march but the same bpm could be an acceptable speed for praticing semi-quavers at least at the beginning.

After a few months of metronome sessions, I use to pratice at the following speeds:

80-85: semiquavers and triplets with downstrums only
100-120: triplets with alternate picking (i'm just learning them), arpeggios etc.
120: quavers with downstrums only (metal style)
140-160: quavers with alternate picking

Of course If i play a specific song i'll try to play more or less at the same speed of the original ones

Matteo

Not sure about the rest of you guys but I can still remember when I first picked up a guitar and tried to change from A to E and if you had asked me to check beats to minute I would have been lucky to have hit 10!! My suggestion is go as quick or slow as you need - the emphasis should be on accuracy.

D

Hello again,

What would be a slow tempo to strum by? - Advice given on this forum is to go slow, how slow? - I do have a metronome on the PC and have been going at 50-60BPM which seems really slow until you play it. When you do play at that tempo 60 doesn't seem so slow!!!

Go as slow as you need to. Everyone has different practicing needs and no one is going to tell you that something is too slow to practice by. There are no rules; do what works for you.