Acoustic guitar Strumming
As a beginner, you may think, guitar strumming is quite easy to learn and often learners have an idea, only focusing on chords initially is more important than practicing the strumming. In the real scenario, guitar strumming and chord learning should be focused with the same importance. Acoustic Guitar Strumming is something which can be taught in a theory for beginners, but with the progress, this skill can be improvised with the music sense of the individual. Strumming is the main body of guitar sound. Even at times, the wrong chord can be covered with a good strumming pattern. Mastering the art of acoustic guitar strumming can elevate your music and bring a whole new dimension to your playing. To be specific, Strumming technique on acoustic guitar plays a vital role as its the natural sound from the guitar. Through this article we will get to know some fundamental of guitar strumming, Guitar Strumming Patterns and tips to improve guitar strumming.
Fundamental of Guitar Strumming
Guitar Strumming is to be played using your dominant hand to brush or strike on the guitar string. Some may feel comfortable strumming the guitar with a naked hand and some may use a pick for strumming on guitar. Using pick will produce more sharp and louder sound wherelese, hand will produce deep and low sound. Positioning the guitar correctly on your lap is an important fact, as it will help to create an angle of your hand movement while strumming. Angle of the pick while holding is also important to get the desired tone from the guitar. As a beginner it might be advised to use pick to learn the strumming pattern, but with time you yourself may wish to play it with hand as it keeps the flexibility of strumming and fingerstyle both depending on music tune.
What to do with Strumming Arms
Once you place your guitar on your leg, your thigh should be 90 degrees with the guitar body of the head of the guitar to be slightly towards you. This will help to secure the guitar and prevent it to move away from lap while strumming. While playing the guitar on chords you should keep your hands from any sort of obstacles.
Position your right elbow in front of the top ridge of the guitar body. It is crucial that your elbow extends beyond this ridge, rather than resting directly on top of it. This placement is essential for effective strumming technique, as your elbow serves as the primary pivot point for your strumming motion. If your elbow remains on top of the guitar body, it will hinder your ability to pivot and strum smoothly.
Once strumming guitar, do not bend your wrist in towards the guitar, this may conflict the actual strumming pattern and cause extra movement of hand. Try to grow a habit of strumming from the elbow instead of rotating the wrist.
Use of Pick for Guitar Strumming
Although it is possible to learn strumming without a pick, it is actually harder with only your hand. As a beginner, it will be easier to understand and learn the strumming technique using a pick. However, selection of pick is also important for guitar strumming. Using a thin pick is advisable for strumming instead of a harder one. In general, harder picks are used for picking on individual strings. Beginners should use a pick of 0.65-0.73mm. Once you hold a pick it should be using the thumb and first finger.
DIFFERENT STRUMMING PATTERN
There are various strumming patterns depending on the rhythm of a song. And with the time and practice, you need to come out from set patterns and create your own strumming ways. For acoustic guitar strumming this pattern will be the only part to catch the interest of the audience to listen to your playing.
Before learning the Strumming pattern, one needs to understand the upstroke and downstroke of strumming. There are songs which can only be played with upstroke or downstroke and some songs with a mix of both. For most of the song, Downstroke is the main stroke which is always played as the beat of a song. On the other hand, upstroke is kind of a filler of the rhythm which may be played OFF the beat of a song. For example, if a song is of 4 beat, 4 downstroke is needed and you may include more than 4 upstroke to complete one cycle.
For upstroke and downstroke, separate technique is followed. For downstroke, all the strings are played(4, 5 and 6 as BASS/Beat) and for upstroke you might need to play only the first 2 or 3 strings. If you play up and down strokes in the same pattern the tone of the guitar will not sound soothing rather it will be distorted or very severe. Note that, for guitar strumming downstroke are very important which helps to drive the song forward.
On the same note, Upstroke is not a minor player compared to down stroke. The combination of these two makes a severe difference.
As an acoustic guitar strumming learner, you may find yourself struggling to vary the pattern and you may remain stuck in one pattern DOWN-UP-DOWN-UP. And you may start playing this one pattern like a piston. But if you actually want to gain skill on strumming, you need to change the pattern by yourself. There are several combination like
- Down, Down, Up, Up, Down
- Down Up Down Down
- Down Down-Up Up-Down Up
One of the wrong beliefs a guitarist may have about strumming is that, strumming pattern is fixed for a single song. Which is wrong. A single song can be played on different strumming patterns.
As an initial learner it is ok to go through a set guitar strumming pattern just to have and gain good coordination of both hands while strumming and changing chords together and also to grasp the concept of rhythm and beat. But no guitarist should be limited within this. Maybe at this point, some of you are looking for a concrete thing which you can follow. But, from our point the strumming pattern is to be varied and it’s a never ending pattern.
Considering the fact, following steps can be followed to get the correct strumming pattern of a song.
- At first, identify the beat of song
- Start playing Downstroke on each Beat
- Add an upstroke in between downstroke. It can be one, or maybe any number.
- You may double the speed and see the result.
The process is not something you need to keep counting the beat. For the initial state it is valid but it’s more on how you listen and feel the beat of a song.
If you get beat like- 1-2-3-4. Same tempo may be played in 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. The time gap remains the same.
Till you are into strumming, you already know about the chords. So, keeping the same beat and duration, play the strumming on an individual chord.
Tips to remember that, you do not need to play all the strings while strumming. Separate the 6 string in 3 parts: Low-Mid-High. Now once you do guitar strumming on a song vary your string selection with same strumming pattern, and play with feel of the song. A romantic song may be played with soft stroke wherelese a rocksong maybe played with hard one. These all depend on your emotions on the song and definitely the song itself.