In the last lesson we learned how to take a strum progression and simplify it so that we can figure out how long the chords last for, and what we need to do in a real basic sense. In this lesson we want to take that basic framework and add in some of the details to spruce it up and make it sound like the real thing.

 

So we’re going to use the same example that we did in the previous lesson. And just to review it sounds like this [MUSIC]. The first thing that we want to do is see if we can hear a pattern that gets applied to a couple different chords, like maybe a couple different chords right in a row. And if something changes then we say okay, we’ll deal with what happens after the change later, but let’s focus in on one pattern applied to a couple different chords. And that’s basically what happened on my G chord and my C add two chord. I went down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, and now I did something different so we’re going to deal with that different part later.

 

Let’s look at the strumming for the first two. So basically what I did was down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. And what you want to do in order to practice this is just work on one chord and see if you can apply that right hand rhythm. So on the G chord I’m just going to go real slow, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. I might try to add the counting in to see if I can get the rhythm to be correct. So, one, two, three, four. Down two and three and four. And one, two, and three, and four and.

 

Now, my example uses down, down, up, up, down, up, if you come up with a different combination of up’s and down’s, but the rhythm is the same that’s okay because the rhythm is more important in the beginning. And the more comfortable you get with all this stuff, you’ll become more comfortable with switching your up’s and your down’s and finding something that works for you. Ultimately it does kind of change the sound because when you do a down you tend to get the thicker strings, and when you do an up you get the little strings. And they make the chord sound a little bit different, but again, rhythm is more important.

 

So once you have that motion down then you take all the chords that use that pattern and you practice just going one to the other, and then looping them. Just making sure you can do those chords with that pattern. So in this case I’ve just got the G and the C add two. So maybe I’ll just go slow and speed it up a little bit after I get the hang of it. One, two and three and four and one, two and three, and four and.

 

So I got that covered. Now I want to look at the technique that I use on the Dsus two. The technique I use there is something we call an arpeggio or arpeggio technique or arpeggiating. These are all sort of same thing. Broken chord is another way; people call it that. And what it is is just that. You take a chord and you break it up, you’re just plucking the strings one at a time.

Now the specific thing I did was I did a strum, then I broke up the strings, and then I repeated that for the second four beats. So the first four beats go one and two. And then I did the same thing in the next measure. So the whole two measures sound like one and two and three and four and. Now the particular motions that I use, I use the down-strum, then I did up, up, up, down, up, up, up, down, up, up, up, down, up.

 

You might come up with your own combination and there’s sort of different schools of thought about how you should arpeggiate, that’s something we’ll go into in a future lesson, but the basic idea here is this technique applies to the Dsus two chord. So as long as I can sort of break down these patterns into specific motions, then I can practice them separately and then combine them.

 

So the gist of strumming is sort of figuring out the easier parts and kind of getting those down, and then usually there’s always a little bit of a difficult part, and the main thing is you want to kind of do something that works with the rhythm. A lot of times we end up doing something that’s not quite like what they’re doing on the record, but if it stays in rhythm and you end up switching to the next chord when they switch, you’re all good, because the fact is most guitar players play it a little bit differently every time, but they always switch the chord at the same point. So learning to become a good strummer doesn’t necessarily mean spending hours getting every last perfect motion, it’s really about getting the whole thing to flow and have a good rhythm.

So in the next lesson we’re going to start looking at some of the other techniques that are similar to like arpeggio and certain strumming things that you might find in various chord regressions. But for now think about breaking down your chord regressions into small, digestible chunks, and working on them real slow until they flow and they sound good, then you speed them up, and then it sounds just like the record.