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5 Guitar Strumming Myths You Need To Know
One of the most challenging things you have to do when you decide to learn acoustic guitar is how to strum correctly.
In my experience strumming is taught very badly. Every acoustic guitar course or teacher will cover the basic four down beats or four down and up beats for every bar.They never attempt to teach you how to actually strum like a pro guitarist. Although the basics are necessary at the beginning so you can practice your chord changeovers repeating these patterns over and over quickly becomes very boring. The problem is these strumming patterns sound nothing like the songs you start learning acoustic guitar to play. Everything sounds so bland.
Any guitar teacher can go into the theory of strumming and discuss swing strum patterns, country patterns or rock but this meant nothing to me when I was learning. All I wanted to do was make my guitar sound like the guitar on the radio.
After a very frustrating first year of counting 1,2,3,4 out loud, or listening to metronomes while strumming monotonously I had a revelation.
The secret to strumming success is to learn the strumming patterns that your favorite guitarists use.
So let’s debunk the biggest myths of strumming.
Your down stroke and up stroke have to sound equal.
Any guitar teacher that tells you this is talking nonsense. I have never heard an acoustic guitar strumming pattern where down and up strokes are equal. It sounds horrible. Down strokes will normally sound a lot more than up strokes. As well as this the first beat of a bar is nearly always played louder.
Think of a down stroke as the actual strum and the upstroke as filler. It’s like you are accidentally catching the string as you moves upwards.
You have to always play over the sound hole.
Again this is not true. Strumming at different positions will give your playing a different type of sound. The further away from the neck you play the ‘thinner’ your sound will be. This is not something you plan though and I would recommend a strumming position that is comfortable to you.
All the string must ring clearly.
This is rubbish and is especially not true for learning acoustic guitar. Some of the most interesting strumming patterns involve dampening string sounds or only playing half the strings.
If you are playing a heavy bass type song it makes a lot of sense to put more emphasis on the bass notes – maybe even ignoring the higher pitched strings. It sounds great when you play the verse part of a song without hitting the bass notes. As you progress towards the chorus put more and more emphasis on the bass. When you reach the chorus hit all the strings. This gives fantastic effect where it sounds like your guitar is rising to a crescendo.
Strumming too hard or too softly is not good.
Again this is rubbish. Strumming hard emphasizes the chord you are playing. This works really well in a lot of songs. Similarly playing softly during the quiet part of a song makes your guitar sound like it’s whispering. Varying levels like this really adds personality to your playing.
You have to learning the ‘boring’ strumming patterns first.
This is not true. Standard four beat strumming patterns are useful for one thing – practicing your changeover between chords. Once you feel you can change reasonably quickly it is time to move on and start playing your favourite songs. After all the only reason you are learning acoustic guitar is so you can play your favourite artists. Will your friends be more impressed by ‘amazing grace’ or the Beatles?
August 25, 2008 at 11:04 am | Learn Guitar Strumming | No comment