Top Secret Guitar Strumming Short Cut
Learn by Being Playful
To get the correct guitar strumming patterns and fingering you can experiment by yourself or with a friend.
We all learn rhythm from TV, iPods, radio stations and live bands.
Rhythm is a part of nature.
- Trains,
- galloping horses,
- rushing water
are all rhythms. A strumming pattern is percussive, sort of like the drummer of your guitar.
It’s important for beginning guitar students to just practice feeling comfortable with the strings. I have memories of how weird it felt for my fingers to get caught up in the strings as I tried to do a simple strum. That’s all a part of it.
At first it feels odd and unnatural, then you get the hang of it and can ease your fingers across the strings and gently strum.
Lessons are OK but, to be honest, the way to learn guitar strumming is to get the feel of drumming on the strum. A good way is to turn on a radio and strum to the rhythm of the songs. That will help you get the feel of it.
You do not need to use a guitar pick for this but if you want to fool around with one, go ahead. Experiment.
Be warned that your strumming fingers could get a little raw without a pick. (You will feel it when you touch a hot cup of coffee the next day. ) The goal here is to get the feel of the guitar and strings as if it is a part of your body. I prefer just an occasional pick.
A lot of guitar practice time goes to chord fingering. The many patterns and combinations of notes up and down the neck take time to learn. Strum patterns are important too, so put in some quality time making rhythm sounds with your fingers over the strings of the guitar. You will discover some interesting sounds.
Open tunings are a great way to learn some strumming patterns. An open tuning makes each strum sound great but you don’t have to know how to make actual chords. You can simply make a chord buy pressing all the strings across a fret. Try this pattern with an open tuning.
- Open,
- Fifth fret,
- Seventh fret.
That combination will give you three chords to play a few hundred songs. That is also known as the One – Four- Five progression.
Using this method I can show a new student how to play entire songs in just a few minutes!
The truth is- by using a dominate chord open tuning you can make good guitar music in about a half hour.
The extra bonus to this is that an open tuning gets you to practice guitar strumming patterns for days before you even learn chord fingering.
Let’s face it, the guitar’s standard tuning sounds awful when strummed as an open chord. You would sound pretty bad that way. But open tunings can make you sound like a rock star in no time. Now that doesn’t mean you will be extremely confident all of a sudden but you can make some decent sounds and that will inspire you to keep playing.
Joni Mitchell is an open tune player.
Most guitar players throw a few open tunings in in on certain songs.
As you learn to strum with open tunings you will build confidence and stay on track because you will feel good about the sounds you are making. That’s absolutely HUGE.
That’s a big part of learning to play. Knowing you are actually getting somewhere is vital to sticking with it. Open tunings do that for you.
Author- Kyle Whitford is a professional guitar player and performs on jingles and commercial music for his marketing company. He is an award winning, voice over artist, singer, copywriter, producer , and SEO in Charlotte North Carolina.
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