How to Improve Your Guitar Strumming Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar

first let's start off with the technique
by which you will never improve its
strumming a guitar and that is
memorizing long complicated combinations
of down and up such as down down down up
down up down up down down down up down
down down down down now you might be
getting better at a single strumming
pattern by that but you're really not
developing in infrastructure for which
to apply to any single song
strumming wise so ups and downs aren't
really the best I would kind of liken
that to like if you're giving somebody
directions to somewhere being like we'll
take a left to right and a right and
take a left and take a relic you don't
know how long to hold things you can
maybe like stretch the words I like down
but you sound ridiculous you look
ridiculous the best way to improve your
strumming is by counting it even think
of the word strumming as just being a
synonym for counting now what I mean by
that is just taking all your down
strokes and making them whole numbers by
counting to four over and over again for
instance like one a lot of people think
they don't have good rhythm but anybody
can do that just one
and those whole numbers will always be
downstrokes no matter what you're doing
sometimes you might skip them 1 2 3
something like that the only way to make
it more complicated is to add notes in
between those downbeats which we're
going to call a whole number equals a
downbeat and that's by adding up strokes
because for every down you have to come
up to go back down anyways so we might
as well make that part of the counting
it we're going to do that by adding the
word and in between the numbers so 1 2 3
4 becomes 1 & 2 & 3 & 4
now once you have the infrastructure of
being able to count that in your head
one and two and three and four and one
and two and just standing like this
then you can start manipulating those
numbers by just adding or subtracting
beats so like 1 2 3 & 4 & 1 2 3 & 4
which is the same as down down down up
down up down
down but now it's a little bit steadier
and the more we can divide those beats
sometimes with your like one E and two E
and A three E and four E Anna that's the
same thing now the one thing this
doesn't take into account is dynamics
dynamics are a very very important part
of strumming so for example going one
and two and three and four is a super
boring way to make anything sound really
dull and lifeless so what you have to do
is concentrate your strum like for
example like we'll do we'll do a one and
two and three and four thing there's not
going to be any variations except for
the dynamics and the spot that my down
and up strokes are occurring on so for
the 1 to N or for the one I'll do like
the lower register I'm just playing like
a C major seven one like this right here
so for the first one is going to be one
and which is just maybe like the a
string and the D string
maybe the g string if I hit it whatever
if I miss it doesn't matter one an and
then for two n I'm going to hit the
higher register of the string one and
two
and already that sounds a little more
dynamic it sounds like I may be playing
more than just one single chord one and
two and one and two and the next thing
is going to edit I'm going to add an
accent to the two so by X and we're
going to hit it a little bit harder
notice I'm not playing as hard as I can
the dynamic accents are really important
part of articulating your strumming
technique so adding an accent to the two
and this one end to end count it's going
to be one in
now by doing this I'm kind of adding the
second half of this strumming pattern
I'm adding a little more emphasis and
it's propelling it further so it sounds
like it's going somewhere
I could add two more beats to this one
and every
you different time signatures like
instead of counting to four you can come
to three that's a pretty common wanna
one two three one and two and three and
one and two and three and so I'm putting
the accent on the three one and two and
three and one and two and three and one
and two
now we haven't omitted any down or up
strokes from this these are all just
back and forth that's a good way to
really develop a habit of assigning a
downstroke to a number and an upstroke
to the word and one and two and three
and four and three and that is the best
way to be able to do more complicated
strumming patterns later just by
subtracting just kind of whipping on the
strings like for like
you
so right there with the actual pattern
is is one two three and four so notice
I'm skipping at the end of one one so
coming up one two three four and one two
three four and one
notice my downstrokes are always on a
whole number the episodes are always on
and no matter how I'm accenting them no
matter which parts of the chord I'm
hitting like whether it be the low
chords or the high ones
a good thing to do is kind of add a low
one almost kind of like you're getting
like a root chord like when I say a root
note just the third fret of the a-string
here now it doesn't have to be as clean
as just the root note doesn't have to be
like one
that can be kind of tricky always
hitting that every time just aim for the
root note if you hit more of the lower
part of the chord it's fine even though
I'm not cleanly hitting the a string
every time it's still giving the
illusion that I'm going for like a root
chord thing it it sounds like this what
I'm trying to do really I'm just kind of
like sloppy so that's a lot better than
thinking it down down it's essentially
the same thing but by adding the numbers
you're always counting one way or
another those numbers you can apply it
to anything even stuff like
notice if you wash my hand I'm always
coming
even if I'm not actually hitting it I'm
still moving in the same thing because
the whole premise of it is just going up
and down and keeping a steady steady
tempo and never stopping it if you're
going like this
no matter how good your rhythm is you're
still going to be a little bit off you
need some kind of internal metronome
almost now it helps your passion with
the metronome but if you're counting it
trust that you'll be able to count
somewhat on time and you won't even need
an investment them all the time
obviously is going to help but maybe
it's not always an ideal practice
situation but this is something you can
do try to count songs that you listen to
like it's on the radio or your iPod or
whatever try to count it and then try to
apply that count so instead of being
like okay that sounds like a down down
down down down up down up down up down
up that sounds like a one two and three
one two and three four five one two and
three one two and three four five
try to notice where the accents are and
maybe if it's a whole chord strum or
dynamically if it's maybe just a few
strings or maybe it's the middle ones
is an amazing range of sounds you can
get off of just one cord if you break
that cord into little pieces of it it
just kind of focus
again the whole province is just always
going down and up and being able to
identify those down ups with a number in
your head