How to Practice Guitar Strumming Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar Course

there are many things in life where if
you're not on time it's no big deal
job interviews filing your taxes giving
eulogies at a funeral but so help me God
if you are late on the downbeat when
you're strumming a guitar you're in real
trouble so today we're going to talk
about how you can practice your
strumming to get on time right because I
think that staying in time then
especially staying in time that slower
tempos is one of the most overlooked
things and hardest things to teach on
guitar so today what we're going to do
we are going to enlist the use of a
metronome to kind of come up with some
exercises that you can maybe incorporate
in more of like a structured way for
practicing right so basically just a
quick note about metronomes in general
all it is is you press a button to a
certain tempo and just click over and
over again right now the volume of a
mushroom is very important and
specifically when you're playing it when
you're working on your timing and your
rhythm
I think the metronome click should be at
least as loud as your guitar right if
you're working on maybe trying to clean
up like our pages and stuff I think
maybe the click can be a little bit
farther but you really want to be able
to feel the click as I would I would say
it's even more paramount to hearing your
guitar because you're really trying to
get the pulse of timing ingrained in
what you're doing right so whether it's
using headphones or hooking up to an amp
or whatever just try to get as loud as
you can where your strumming or whatever
you're doing isn't totally masking the
click right so we're going to do is
we're going to set the metronome to 94
but for you whatever you want to do if
you want to go way slower do it we want
to do this as slow as you possibly can
while you're perfectly on time I
remember when I started practicing
slowly I was shocked at how bad I was
because I was used to trying to just
speed everything up I think we have a
tendency to try to play things as fast
as we can which kind of leads to maybe
having bad timing right so we're going
to set the metronome to 94 beats per
minute right 1 2 3 4 stuff like that
right so now we're just gonna take a
regular C chord and we're just going to
try to hit every downbeat so a downbeat
just want to clicks 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
3 4 now one thing you notice really
quick if you look at my strumming right
when I'm going 1 2 3 4 there's a big
difference between that and going 1
three four I think a tendency might be
to kind of be jumpy on the down be right
like you hit the down B right now and
even though you might be able to hit
that second down beat again if you're
jumping back up it's going to have a
rush sound and you're gonna more often
than not you're just stabbing at pieces
of time right you want to create a
system where it's more like a flowing
two three four C so it's almost like my
wrist is just kind of on autopilot and
I'm just striking the strings on the way
down right one two and again I'm kind of
choking the strings just to kind of you
know get more of an impact of the click
one you might wanna practice
now the reason we're doing this is
because we're going to start adding
subdivisions into these beats right
so whatever tempo you're at once you get
a handle on hitting the down beat every
time we're going to start adding cutting
these into half right so instead of one
two three four gone and two and three
and four and gone had two and three and
four and one and two and three and four
and so what you want to do is you want
to be able to go back and forth between
those so we can start with just down
beats one two three four one and two and
three and four and one two three four
one and two and three and four and now
the next obvious thing to do will be to
split each B into four I think the best
way to count that is one E and a two E
and A three E and a four E and so every
beat now is going to be down up down up
right so instead of going one and two
and three and four and one E and two E
and three E and four E Anna now before
we do this to the click I want to just
kind of talk about how are doing this
there's a little bit dynamic right and I
think this is a good way to really kind
of break in to dynamic strumming so
we're breaking this chord in two parts
and for the first two beats I want to
kind of get more of the chords so we're
dynamically adding a little bit more of
the high end
I think when you're strumming and you
kind of go for the higher part of the
string set you get a little bit more of
the accent one E and a two E and A three
E and a four E and so what I'm doing is
going I'm hitting maybe aiming for the
bottom floor bottom three whatever just
anything in the bottom part of the swing
set one E and so the second two beats
are going to be the lower strings right
you can even just make it a root note
whatever just aim for string set so
you're more focused on your timing then
exactly what strings you're hitting one
E and two E and three E and a four E
Anna so let's try to add that with the
metronome two three four so down beats
three four one two three four one and
two and three and four and one and two
and three and four and one E and a two E
and three E and a four E and a one E and
a two E and A three E and four E and
now that could be a little fast right so
slow it way down whatever temple you
need you to be able to go one E and two
E and
and really try to count out loud it may
seem kind of silly counting a lot but it
is such good practice to ingrain
structure into your playing right so the
other subdivision we're going to do our
triplets right triple-s I think are a
little bit trickier to count at first
because it's easier to symmetrically
divide beats in my opinion but basically
to do a triplet we're just going to
break that beat into three separate
beats so instead of one two three four
triple a triple and triple the triplet
triplet triplet triplet triplet now the
interesting thing about triplets is
we're changing the accent if we're
staying in a down-up pattern so it's
gonna be a triplet trip of it down up
down up down up down up down up down up
down up down up down another way to
practice triplets is
down up up down up up like this is more
like a walked I feel two three four
triple a triple triple triple triple
agility
so again either way is good I kind of
like the alternating way better to move
in triple the triple triple triple
triple it's going to give you more
control over going down and going up so
if like that you guys so we're going to
go through all the subdivisions in kind
of one exercise 1 2 3 4 down beats 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 rate F 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3
& 4 & triple and triplet triplet triplet
triplet triplet triplet triplet 1 e and
a 2 e and a 3 E and a 4 E and a 1 e and
a 2 e and a 3 E and a 4 E and so
basically if you can kind of seamlessly
go back and forth between all those
subdivisions you're going to really have
a better understanding of when you can
switch in and out of them and just
getting that kind of ingrained in your
muscle memory of your wrist is a really
important thing now one other thing I
want to talk about is adding palm mutes
to kind of a practice session right
so again palm mutes I did a separate
video on this which I'll link it to you
if you don't know what they are
basically you're just kind of getting
your hand on the bottom of the string
set to get more like on a dead sound
right and what I like about doing this
with the metronome is you develop a lot
of feel because they're all going to be
down strokes but you're accenting
certain ones so for example we're still
going to the same thing with the
subdivisions if we just did the down
beats it would be like a 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
now before we want down down up down up
when we started breaking them in half
right but what I like to do to kind of
create like an all straining dynamic
it's kind of like a 1 2 3 & 4 & 1 2 3 4
& and I think this is a really good way
to kind of get like a like a chug type
of a pulse thing so what i'm doing here
is on the downbeat i'm getting maybe the
first three four strings whatever and
then on the offbeat on the upbeat
however you want to look at it i'm just
going for the root note so 1
two and three and four and one and two
and three and four and one and two and
three and four and with the mushroom
again yeah this is something you can
really get pretty fast at like if you
let's go to America's favorite tempo
which is 120 oh one two three four and
one two three one two three and so once
you get it down you start changing
chords I'm just taking this C chord and
moving it up and down two frets to make
kind of like a D chord one two and three
and four and one and two and three and
four and one
so basically creating whatever kind of
you know course that you want as far as
is being able to do subdivisions with
the metronome is going to be super
helpful I also think that really just
kind of playing around with songs like
maybe you find a song that you like that
you know the chords to and try to play
along with it now that's kind of easier
said than done especially for higher
tempo songs because you need to be able
to slow things down it's very very
important again I know how hard it is
and how stupid it seems to slow your
metronome down to like 60 BPM but trust
me it'll totally pay off and it's so
much easy to do something slower and
then gradually just crank it up then
really just try to like do something
super fast so any kind of like
combination of metronome work and oh is
this kind of like exploring creatively
what you can do with strumming is great
but I think especially if you want to
focus in on your rhythm guitar playing a
metronome is an excellent tool for
getting better