Strumming advice.

Strumming comes completely naturally to me. I also believe that a strumming pattern doesn't have to be 100% exact as you hear it on the recording. I don't think that most guitar players write out their strumming patterns before recording, they just come up with something that feels right to them, so why should you bother copying them exactly? I realize this is of little help to you, because you want to get it right 100%.

OK, here's somethign that may be useful to you. Take your guitar and form a barré F chord, but press it liglhtly so that it is muted. Now, pick a tempo and wave your strumming hand over the string in this fashion down-up-down-up, etc, but don't actually hit the strings. Keep a regular tempo.

Now, what you do is sometimes hit the strings on a downstroke, sometimes on an upstroke, sometimes muted, sometimes with the full sound pressing down the F chord, or sometimes not at all while letting the previous strum ring out. By doing a combination of these things you will get the "feel" that you need for strumming. It is important to keep waving your strumming hand in an even tempo, whether you actually hit the strings or not. If you get bored doing this, try changing chords in between strums. Or you can try to strum specific patterns such as dmdud-du, or dmdudud-du, etc (d =downstroke, u =upstroke, m =mute, - =let ring). If you practice this often enough you will develop a certain feel for strumming patterns, and this in turn will make it easier to pick apart other songs.

Alright, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

I'll dedicate all my free time to this, as I really have to make some progress before I go insane.

Well since you didn't mention whether you're playing electric or acoustic, I'll assume acoustic. Can't really guess on the types of songs you're talking about though.

It really comes down to ear-training. But not the type where you see it advertised that you 'can have perfect pitch in 30 minutes' kind of thing. I'm talking about 'listening.' It's not as easy as you would think because there's so many levels of listening. In short, there is nothing to 'make it easier.' And it's not even about slowing a song down - not at first. You have to listen - HARD - to what's being played, until you can discern what's going on; until you can 'hear' the difference between upstrokes and downstrokes. They do sound different, but only slightly - depending on who the player is. Sometimes they specifically want it to sound even - both up and down strokes - sometimes they want to put more emphasis on the downstrokes or upstrokes. That's what you, as a player, must understand, and listen for, and finally discern. It takes listening, but really focused listening.

Now you must have some depth of hearing/listening/discernment by now otherwise you wouldn't have said that it doesn't sound the same to you (as on the recording). But to say that you can't find how many beats there are for the strums - that would take listening too - maybe without even having your guitar with you. Just *listen* and tap on a table or desktop or your knee, so that the rhythm gets embedded.

Again, there's no shortcuts to ear-training/aural training. It's just something you have to do, like being able to hear the difference between two pitches, knowing that there's 4 or or 8 beats to each measure. It's mathematical to a certain point, but then it has to become internalized - and there's no shortcuts or easy way to do that.

At least you can hear the difference between the record strumming and what you're strumming. Investigate that; delve into it a bit more. Are you strumming faster or more often than the record? Slower? Between the other guy's strums? Why isn't matching. Listen and find out why it isn't matching. There really is no 'silver bullet' for this; you have to listen, even to the point of forgetting about actually strumming along for awhile. Put the guitar down and listen to the tracks. Imagine the guy standing in front of you, strumming the guitar - what would it look like? Down strums hit the bass strings first so there would be a thicker, louder sound (normally), while upstrokes hit the high/thin strings first, giving a lighter, softer sound (normally).

Listen to the beats; strong beats, weak beats, the drummer hitting the highhat evenly but opening them up on the strong beat of each measure. Cymbal crashes after every 4th or 8th measure maybe. Does the rhythm guitarist strum with the high-hat or the kick drum. Does he strum a loud strum on the downbeats? That kind of thing.

Hope this helps.

That helps greatly, thanks very much. I also appreciate the reply.

I'm playing an acoustic and it's pretty much acoustic songs I'm trying to figure out. I'm not sure if they would be considered advanced or basic or in between or anything. That's actually what I'm working on now, training my ear, at least, I think so. You're right, I understand there is no quick or easy way, but the advice I've received in this thread has actually already helped. So I'll stick at it and ask myself those questions next time I attempt this, which will be in a few minutes, no doubt!

Anyway, thanks again.

Demo gave you some great advice there, although it will take some work to get there. Something you might want to try is instead of stressing about getting the exact strumming pattern down try starting with a straight eighth note pattern and see how that goes. for many songs just that basic pattern will get you going and as you feel more comfortable you can mix up the strums as needed.

If I'm having trouble working out a strumming pattern, I generally try to get it right on paper before I try and play it. I make 8 or 16 very faint marks on a piece of paper and then move my pen along them in time with the music, so that from start to end takes as long as one bar of music. Once I've got the speed right, focusing on the end of the pen watching the marks flash past helps me make sense of the timing. I then make the marks for the strums darker and try to check it visually with the music. If I'm happy with that, I'll start with the first strum being a downstroke, and fill in all the marks with whatever stroke it would be for an alternating pattern (ie, x-xx-xxx becomes D-DU-UDU, xx-x-x-x becomes DU-U-U-U). Then it's time to suck it and see, but it's normally a good basis to start from at the very least :)

as i said in a lot of similar threads learning to strum requires a lot of patience and a few excercises.

First you have to learn how the most common strummin patterns sounds because only if you know this you could recognize if your target song employs a similar pattern (that's where a tutorial cd come handy)

secondarily you have to learn to play them correctly (again a tutorial cd or metronome will help you a lot)

third: listening to the song try to determine which is the beat resolution or in a nut try to understand if the pattern is based on eight notes or sixteen ones or about triplets (blues). Generally (but it's not a rule) you could try this:

rock songs: straight eight notes pattern with all downstrums dd/dd/dd/dd
folk an country songs: syncopated eight notes like d/du/u/du
slow numbers: sixteen notes pattern like dd/ddu/dd/ddu
blues: shuffle pattern or triplets

four: remembere that as long as you play with the correct beat resolution you could choose any pattern you like and still sounds good so it is not so determinant to nail the original one

Cheers

Matteo

p.s. send me a pm if you wish a liste of songs with their suitable patterns

i'd say with a vast majority of strummed songs, if you just play straight up and down, then when the strum comes where you're playing a downstroke, so is the guitar player, and same with upstrokes. this means that downstrokes occur on the beat and half beat, while upstrokes occur in between. if there's no strum, then it's probably being muted or a phantom strum occurs where the hand is moving but no strings are being played. it's easier to play this way.
there are sometimes exceptions. punk and metal usually just uses downstrokes. for acoustic guitar, though, the up n down pattern is prevalent.

how i got good at rhythm guitar is by simply trying to play as many different rhythms as i could come up with. any kind of rock or hip hop beat, or those annoying cheerleader claps or marching band drumline rhythms. i've probably played the bo diddley beat a million times. also, when you come up with a beat, get it steady, get comfortable with it, then change it a little bit. get comfortable with that, then change it again. keep going. get comfortable with syncopation. play on only the off-beats. play rhythms that are uncomfortable and learn to groove on them. learning to drum can help, or just ripping off drum patterns and playing them on the guitar works.

Hey Matt

Just reading the post on strumming, this is something I have difficulty with, I can play along with a lot of cd's (love Beatles and 60's and 70's stuff) but quite often I find I am nearly always using the same strumming pattern D D DuDu seems to work quite well over a lot of songs I like.
p.s. send me a pm if you wish a liste of songs with their suitable patterns

I would appreciate a list od songs with patterns to try out..

Also if I was to practice these patterns with a metronome what bpm would you suggest for each strum?
rock songs: straight eight notes pattern with all downstrums dd/dd/dd/dd
folk an country songs: syncopated eight notes like d/du/u/du
slow numbers: sixteen notes pattern like dd/ddu/dd/ddu
blues: shuffle pattern or triplets

Also if someone could do a video to demonstrate these would be good :D

Thanks
Keith

I have to thank everyone for the advice in this thread. Practiced a lot yesterday and I can already notice some good improvments, so thanks for that.

Anyway, I may aswell ask, even though I may look like an idiot, as to me the strumming pattern in this song sounds quite simple, I just cannot nail it. Even with a video of him playing the song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEBz2-tq178

Now, not the first 39 seconds, thats part of another song. But from 40 seconds onwards, is one of the songs I'm trying to learn, my favourite song actually, so I'm determined to get it down. However if anyone could give me a helping hand, that would be great too. I don't expect anyone to write out the entire thing, as it sounds like it changes quite often, but just maybe from 40 seconds 'til 60 seconds? After one minute my mind just completely switches off, no clue what he's doing, but the start would be an excellent um...starting point, I guess. From 40 seconds onwards that is. Incase anyone figures out the first pattern, which would be great, just not what I'm looking for right now.

Thanks to anyone if they can help.

ok here is my list, take it as a starting point since it is not the Holy Bible :D . After a few tryings everyone could find out better patterns


N.B. There are several other possible suitable patterns. The suggested one sometimes are not always the exact ones palyed on original recording, but in some cases are the simplest. Regarding bpm they are approximated since I did play most of the songs only along the original recording

Cheers and let me kow any mistakes

Matteo

When learning new strumming patterns from listening to the original track...

I get my hand into a pendulum motion in time with the beats of the song... usually 4 downstrokes (and 4 upstrokes)per measure for a song in 4/4 time. | Dudududu | Dudududu | Dudududu | Dudududu | etc... (this can also be 8 downs and 8 ups in 4/4 time but the idea is the same)
watch the guys strumming hand in the video to see the correct timing of the pendulum motion.. this quickly becomes second nature..

Now, start by playing every upstroke and downstroke in time with the song... it sounds boring and monotonous, right ?
The trick with cool strumming patterns lies in the strokes that are omitted..

Your hand will keep moving up and down with the same speed and rhythm but you need to listen for when NOT to actually strike the strings on the way through your strumming action.

The first strumming pattern that he uses looks like this | d D d D | duDuduDu | d D d D | duDuduDu | (the accented beats are in uppercase-- this is where the snare drum would most likely be)...
Notice in the 1st and 3rd measure he doesn't play the upstrokes (but his hand still comes back up in the regular motion, he just doesn't strike the strings on the way through)

I actually found it quite hard just now to write out where the up and downstrokes are... I usually come up with my own patterns... and never think about how they look on paper.

I get my strumming hand in a pendulum motion, like i mentioned, and then play along with the song.. You can hear where the gaps are in the strumming so these are the beats you don't play.. as long as your hand keeps the steady pendulum of up and down in the right timing, practically anything pattern you play will sound good... listen closely to copy his pattern exactly, if thats what you want....

DemoEtc's advice about listening for the beats and the difference between the up and downstroke is very good.. As long as your hand is in the same pendulum motion at the same speed as the song you copy, you will know whether you have to play an upstroke or a downstroke based on the direction your hand is travelling.

Sorry if this is confusing.. but i don't know how else to describe it.

Good Luck

J

Thanks, J. I appreciate you taking the time to do that. I'd repay you in some way if I could, but I'm not sure if I have much knowledge!

I'll take the advice on board aswell, glad I started this thread, has been very helpful so far.

No worries, glad i could be of some help.