Quick question:
What is the difference between the rest and a ghost strum? When you still have to come down past the strings on the 'rest' to come up on the third count, why couldn’t I just use the 'rest' as another count? This is where I was getting lost while trying this and it was throwing me off in the count as I was going down on three and not up.
Thanks guys!
Most strumming is divided as such -
Sixteenth notes - divided into four per beat
1 e + a
D u D u
Your hand should always move that way (ghost strums if you like) whether or not you are hitting the strings to keep timing flowing. Hope that helps.
together we stand, divided we fall..........
A rest is silence. A ghost strum isn't.
If you're playing a figure that is eighth note-sixteenth note-sixteenth note, many guitarists (myself included) will use an upstroke between the eighth and the first sixteenth. This helps you maintain your relation of the pattern to the beat and keep good time. But the eighth note is still an eighth note... which means it's ringing while you play the "ghost strum" (to avoid confusion with "ghost notes", which are actually audible on recordings, I prefer to call them "miss strokes" in lessons - because you miss the strings). This technique is even more common when the longer note is in the middle of the beat - almost all guitarists would strum down-up-up for a sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth figure.
Because a rest in music indicates silence, you don't have that eighth note ringing. The sound ends when the second quarter of a beat arrives. You do that by dampening the strings - if you're playing a barre or other chord with no open strings, you can let off the pressure on your fretting fingers. If you're playing a chord with open strings, you'd damp the strings using either hand.
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Wow, this is way more info than I expected :shock: Thanks guys!
