Chords for "The Egg Trick" Will FIX Your Strumming Problems

What's up everyone, Mike here from The Art of Guitar.
Today I was going to show you something that helped one of my students out quite a bit.
And after it helped her out, I started using it with a lot of students who had some rhythm trouble.
And it's kind of funny, sometimes the strangest things can bring about a revelation in a student.
And in this case it was just an egg shaker that I had laying around.
So right away I'll just show you the situation.
We were using one of the strum patterns that we like to teach on TheArtOfGuitar.com.
I call this one the Mellencamp strum because John Mellencamp, John Cougar, Johnny Cougar,
John Cougar Mellencamp, I don't know.
He would use this all the time for his songs.
It's just a really good feeling strum.
It sounds like [G] this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ It probably sounds familiar to you.
Well, the student couldn't quite get the strum correct because in the middle of the strum
there's a gap.
It sounds like this.
_ _ _ Whenever somebody hears a gap, they instinctively stop strumming if they don't have a good sense of rhythm.
So here's what happens.
_ _ _ And then they're on a weird strumming pattern.
And what I like to do is teach you the direction you go with your strum hand determines the
feel of the rhythm.
So here's the difference.
Here's incorrect. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ See how herky-jerky it kind of seems?
And if you do it correctly, _ _ _ _ _ _ it just flows better.
So what I had to do to teach them to keep their arm moving was I found an egg shaker
that was just sitting in one of my drawers.
And I handed it to her and I said, no matter what you do, I want you to keep this thing going.
Kind of like you're on stage and someone hands you a tambourine or a shaker and you just
got to follow the rhythm.
So I gave her this, this is the golden egg one.
And I just told her, okay, pretend you jumped down the stage and somebody threw it to you
and you had to just keep the rhythm.
So I started playing the strum on my guitar and then I just had her go _ like _ _ _ that.
And I think something started to kind of click in her mind because then she's like, okay,
so hand me the pick.
Let me try it.
I'm like, hold on.
There's one in between stage.
And I told her to hold onto the egg shaker while holding the pick.
_ So if you want to try this, go ahead and try to do both.
So you hold the egg shaker in your hand, you hold the pick like normal.
And then what you want to do is you just want to start to strum down and up.
Okay.
Don't start to do the Mellencamp strum quite yet.
Just go down, up, down, up, down, up and try to get them both happening.
So it's going to sound like this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Feel free to change chords.
It doesn't matter. _ _
[D] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ Okay.
You're sort of your own percussionist at this point.
Now what this teaches you is that you're not allowed to stop your strumming hand at all.
If I did the incorrect thing and stopped, _ _ _ _ [E] the shaker stops and that's what you don't
want that to happen.
So what happens then is after you get that down with just down and up strumming, now
you start to do the correct rhythmic pattern.
So you got to think, _ _ _ while _ _ the shaker is going, and that's going to force you to do downstrokes
in weird places that maybe you weren't ready for, as well as upstrokes.
So [G] here's what you end up with.
Down, down, up, up, down.
Down, down, up, up, down. _ _ _ _
_ _ It's _ _ _ _ _ _ a really strange feeling at first, but because there's the shaker in your hand, you
actually feel the rhythm happening at that level as well.
Very strange.
Eventually, if you can get that strum pattern down with the egg going, you can put the egg
aside [A] and then try the strum pattern.
So now I'll just pretend the egg's in my hand and my hand cannot stop.
So now you [G] get this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ The correct strum.
_ So it ends up being this strumming pattern.
Down, down, up, up, down.
[D] Down, down, up, up, down.
Because you're not stopping.
That's the direction the picking has to go for that rhythm to work.
This can work on any strum, from just straightforward down and up strums to 16th note strums.
So pretend you're trying to do, like, We Can Work It Out by The Beatles.
So if you're going like, _ _ _ [A] or Fleetwood Mac, _ _ _
[D] _ _ [A] [E] you know, that [D] real aggressive strum, that
actually works really well with the egg.
And here's what happens if you don't do it correctly.
Watch my right hand.
It looks like this. _ _ _ _
See how you lose all flow?
So get the shaker out _ and then do the same thing and try to get that shaker going right
in time like this.
_ _ Alright, while holding the pick.
It's _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
funny because I think in We Can Work It Out there is the sound of the shaker.
Maybe it's a tambourine.
Anyway, there's some percussive element going with it.
Now you can do it all with one hand, practically.
And I believe I remember a long time ago in a guitar magazine, somebody had advertised
an egg shaker with a pick sticking out of the side.
I think they really meant it more for accompanying yourself as you're strumming to have a shaker.
But it can be really useful in a teaching situation or a learning situation where you
really just want to feel the rhythm as you're playing.
Because sometimes just holding a pick and strumming is not enough of a feeling.
And once you start adding that element of a percussive instrument with your hand, you
really feel it happening.
So give the egg shaker trick a try and see if it does help your rhythm as well as your strumming.
It kind of killed two birds with one stone.
Bird egg, that's funny.
Alright guys, thanks for watching.
Hopefully I helped some of you