Easy Guitar Strumming Lessons
OK, before we start I better let you know this lesson is for absolute beginners to guitar.
Guitar Strumming Lesson No. 1
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The first guitar strumming pattern you will have to learn is four beats down for every bar. A bar in music is simply a measure of time. So when someone says four beats in a bar they mean for every ‘X’ seconds in that song there are four beats. Four beats in a bar (4/4 time) is the most common timing so it is the obvious place to start.
You can use the metronome on this site to help you keep beat. Set the bpm to 60 (60 beats per minute) and the beats to 4. Increase the bpm slowly (in increments of 10) as you improve.
To start, hold the pick correctly, finger an E chord and strum downwards hitting all the strings. Do this 4 times. Make sure each of the strums is evenly spaced.
From here on it gets a little trickier though. This time we are going to play the E chord and then smoothly, without losing our beat, change over to a D chord.
It is important to remember when we play the D chord we don’t play the top string (Low E). A lot of guitarists ignore this rule and play the Low E because they think playing an extra string won’t matter. It is better to pick up good habits early though. It will stand to you when you start adding different bass variations to your chords and your guitar strumming patterns become more complex.
Don’t worry if you can’t change chords quickly at first. It takes time and practice to do chord changes. The good news is after the first few chords have been mastered it gets easier and easier.
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