Up stroke help? (Alternate picking?)

My best guesses...

1. You're gripping the pick too tightly. Stay relaxed.

2. You're not rotating your wrist. When you're strumming chords, you want the pick to glide across the strings (in both directions) rather than slapping at them.

You know, I don't think I've ever rotated my wrist to do an upstroke...maybe very slightly. But I suppose everyone approaches their playing in a different way.

I guess it would help to know what you're doing. Are you playing chords that consist of more than two strings, then? Because say if you're playing powerchords, are you having trouble because you expect the upstroke to sound the same as the downstroke? Because it's going to sound a bit different (if you want that all downstroke-sound, probably will have to work on doing that as well), and it may take getting used to reversing the pick motion since you're coming back up through the strings in a different way. But essentially that's what you should be doing, close if not the exact opposite of the motion you began with in your downstroke.

Are you hitting other strings inadvertently? Just slow your practice down, you have to walk before you can run, and all that stuff. Another thing to try is lightly rest your extra fingers (or you know, the ones you're not using besides your thumb) over the other strings in case you accidentally strike a string you didn't mean to hit. That can be helpful if you just want to strum wider and get a more rhythmic attack going.

Well that's about all I can think of. Good luck with your playing.

I used to have the same problem, or at least something similar: it felt like there was resistance on my upstrokes, like I was going to break something.

I can't say exactly how I solved it, but apparently my hand learned how to do upstrokes. A few things that seemed to help me:

- Use a thin pick.
- Reduce the amount of pick protruding from your finger and thumb.
- Loosen your wrist, and your fingers.
- Play with different angles between the pick and the strings until something works a bit better.

Good luck!

I'm a new player too, and noticed the same thing that you are describing. A guitar playing friend helped me out a bit with this advice: He had me very slowly make a downstroke and stop my motion at the very bottom of my stroke with my wrist fixed and showed me that I could see the 'bottom' of my thumb on the pick holding hand, then he guided me through an upstroke and showed me how I could see the 'top.' I found that I was able to strum much more cleanly if my pick was slightly pointed away from the direction that I was strumming and the trick to doing that was wrist motion

Thanks guys, I am still pretty bad but loosening my wrist seems to be helping.
2 more things.
1) when watching other people play guitar they seem to almost like sweep over all the strings when strumming and I'm only going over the ones I'm playing. Is there something to it?
2) I am also having a lot of trouble playing a chord with a dead note in the middle as it seems to really stop all pick movement.
Thanks again guys.

1. There are two ways of playing only certain strings: (a) carefully strumming only those strings, or (b) strumming through all 6 but muting the strings that aren't supposed to sound. You mute by holding a string with a finger (left hand or sometimes right) but not pushing it all the way down to the fretboard. The muted strings will make a "click" but no tone.

Most players do a combination of (a) and (b). I personally end up using muting a lot because my right hand isn't that controlled yet.

2. I hope you're not trying to skip over the "dead note in the middle" with the pick. This is a case where muting is always used, as far as I know...

Of course not.
I strum through the dead note but it really feels like a speed bump in pick movement.
Just wondering if there were any tricks/techniques/something I am doing wrong.

hi mate

just a notation: if you've been playing for 10 days it's a little too early to desperate and say "i cannot do an upstroke for the life of me"! We human being are so impatient but it is better to remember that it needs a lot of patience to learn guitar. A lot of people spend several months before being able to strum even the simplest three chord song around. Secondarily if i can give you my 2 cents i would say to forget about sixteen notes which requires a decent sense of time and a good hand coordination to be played and just focus on the simplest eight notes pattern around.
Try to do this exercise:

- mute the strings with your left hand or choose a single chord you can play quite well (usually open Em is a good choiche);
- set your metronome to 80 or 90 beats per minute
- start tapping your foor alongisde the beat
- strum the string with a continuous donw and up movement: each time you tap your foot you should play a downstroke, each time you raise it you should play an upstroke

do this exercise for a few days and you should solve most of your problems. When you can do it fine just do the same execrcise over a chord progression and/or set the metronome a bit higher.

Cheers

Matteo

Thanks bro.
I know it's a tad early to be really judging my skill.
I will try though.
Thanks!

"Disclaimer: I've only been playing guitar for about a week and a half "

I've been there. In time you will gain the hours of playing. Still, the posts from the experienced players provide the correct answer. Further, you are VERY smart in asking your question here. Why?

When I first started (about 4 months before I started looking here for answers) I learned some bad habits. And they took awhile to remedy. So keep posting and ask away. There are some serious gurus on this site You'll see if you stick around. :shock: