strumming techniques

Hi all

Just registered on your cool site, and was wondering if anybody could give me some advice on strumming techniques. Ive been playing accoustic for just over a year now, and although i am compitant at changing chords, both open and barr, i feel my playing is lacking because of my strumming technique (or lack of it). If anybody has got any advice on practice techniques or any advice what so ever i would be very grateful

cheers

To strum, you need to have a motion coming from you elbow, at a steady eight note space.
What gives your strumming pattern their sound is whether you hit the strings coming up or down...

let's take a bar: you have 8 eight notes (nothing unusual here)
let's name them 12345678...
Now, you arm is coming down on 1357 and is coming back up on 2468.
Let's say you're going to play 13567. You need to make it with the same 12345678, but not playing the motions you shouldn't (here, it's the 248) even though you don't play them, your arm DOES the motion! That's pretty complicated to explain on a forum, feel free to ask again...

cheers

yeah i get where your comming from, is there anywhere i can go that can show me some different strumming patterns, or the basic strumming patterns moving on from down up down up, or down down up up - (hitting only first string) down

Thanks to anyone who can help, this isn't the easyist thing to explain

I don't know any site with strumming patterns... Anyone?

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~desmith/guitar/acoustic/info/strumming.htm

I might stop being so lazy and have a crack at these myself, as my rhythm is down a bit at the mo.

Cheers.

It's weird, all those kids playing satriani tunes, but unable to strum their way through 'twinkle little star'

Hats of to roy harper i think not, in this instance hats of to james for the direction to that excellent strumming site!!!! something to keep me practicing at aswell as giving me some ideas for developing my own strumming patterns!!

cheers for the help guys!!

Originally posted by mdavies020
Hats of to roy harper i think not, in this instance hats of to james for the direction to that excellent strumming site!!!! something to keep me practicing at aswell as giving me some ideas for developing my own strumming patterns!!

cheers for the help guys!!

The strumming site looks aright that James sent you to.
But also you could also try another technique to
experiment with while srtumming and that is try Releasing
the pressure of your left hand very little on the up-stroke.This makes a nice affect for alot of other styles
and songs.(Experimenting thats were its at)


Mark
The left hand is also an important tool in Strumming Techniques!





[Edited by skee1 on 03-12-2002 at 08:49 AM]

When I was just starting out (you don't want to know how long ago that was!), I was told "You pick up chords faster than anyone I've ever seen, but you can't strum worth s--t!" That stung badly enough to send me 'out to the woodshed' to work on it.

What I found was that if I muted the strings with my left hand, and tried to mimic the drum lines by strumming the muted strings, I rapidly developed a strumming style that still serves me well. A rhythm guitarist has to do more then just play the right chords at the right time. If you work well with the drums and bass, your strumming technique can really fill out the overall sound.

As an example, try to picture what The Who song "Pinball Wizard" would sound like if Pete Townsend was strumming at four downstrokes to the bar! A complete guitar player has to know more than playing scales at light-speed.