Skip to main content
By -

Intro to Strumming

Having difficulty learning how to strum? Here are a couple of thoughts for the beginning guitar player.
Probably the majority of songs we play are in 4/4 timing. This means the song’s timing is a series of 4 beats sections, or “4 quarter beats per measure”. Every count of 4 is a measure, and is simply counted like this 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-etc. The space of time between each number is the same.

Strumming Quarter Beats

Every time we count a quarter beat, we strum “down”. I recommend counting out loud while strummingdown once per quarter beat.
Listen to this strumming pattern with the G and Cadd9 chords:
Audio Player

Strumming Eighth Beats

We can double time this by inserting a beat halfway between each quarter beat. Then all the beats become eighth beats. We count it like this 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, etc. To strum this, we would strum downwhen we say a number, and we would strum up when we say “&”. Make sure the spacing between each strum stays the same and consistent.
Listen to this eighth beat strumming pattern with the G and Cadd9 chords:
Audio Player

Accenting the First Beat in a Measure

Neither of the above strumming patterns sounds that great. However, by accenting the first beat of a measure, we can improve the sound of the pattern. We can accent the first beat by changing it to a quarter beat and count like this 1 2 & 3 & 4 & … Strum down on the numbers and up on the “&s” — also make sure the first beat is the same duration as “2 &” or “3 &” or “4 &”.
Listen to the G and Cadd9 chords played with an accented first beat:
Audio Player

Three Beats per Measure

Another popular pattern is 3/4 timing (three quarter beats per measure). We can take the above pattern and drop the 4th quarter beat, or the last two eight beats and count like this: 1 2 & 3 & … Again, strum down on a number, and up when you say “&”. Also, make sure the first beat has the same duration as the “2 &” and “3 &”.
Listen to the G and Cadd9 chords in 3/4 time with an accented first beat:
Audio Player

Please leave a comment with any questions you may have.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By -
Image
Simple Bass Line Progressions A bass line progression is a progression where the bass note of a chord (“the lowest note played in a chord”) is changing and following a predetermined or predictable pattern. There are two generic types of bass line chord progressions: ascending (the bass line goes higher in pitch) and descending (the bass line goes lower in pitch). The bass line progressions can be pictured as going up or down a small set of stairs. Root Note is Usually the Bass Note One thing to understand first, is when any chord is being played, it’s bass note (or lowest note) is the root note of the chord (unless we are told otherwise). Thus the bass note of a G chord, a Gsus, a Gm7, a Gdim, etc. is a “G” note. If we need to change the bass note of a G major chord to a B, for example, we would write it kind of like a fraction: G/B. We often call these “slash” chords. The Dm7 chord with a C note in the bass would be written ‘Dm7/C’. An A7 with a C# note in the bass would be w
Read more
By -
Image
SO HOW TO FORM CHORDS FROM THE SCALES HOW TO CONVERT THEM,,HERE IS GUIDE ENJOY, Forming Chords From Scales Chords typically occur together in families. There are certain groups of chords that when used together, often sound good. The most common way of forming families of chords that sound good together is to form a set of chords from a scale. When you do this, you will have a number of chords that all belong to the same key. In this article, I’ll show you through how to form a family of chords from a scale. By understanding this, you will understand why certain chords work well together in a given key and be able to start to see these families of related chords being used in the music you learn. Lets start by forming triads (three note chords) from a major scale. To make things easy lets use C Major as our scale here. The notes of the C Major scale are as follows: C D E F G A B C Each of the notes of this scale can be used to build a chord on. In order to do this
Read more