Chords for Guitar Lesson 4 - Strumming Pattern (www.vGuitarLessons.com)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Em] _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Abm] _ Hello, welcome back [E] again.
I hope you had a chance to learn those chords that we learned
in the last lesson.
The E chord, the A chord and the D chord.
And I hope you at least had
a chance to practice strumming them and [A] swapping from one chord to the other.
_ _ _ _ [E] _
Now what I'm
going to show you today is a way of strumming with the plectrum [F] which will make your playing
sound much more interesting.
Because here's the thing, when people first learn [Ab] guitar
usually [Gb] they just strum downwards with the plectrum like [E] this.
_ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ [A] _ _ [E] _
_ And that's okay but after a while you'll find that that starts to sound quite boring.
So what
I want to do is give you a [C] more interesting strumming pattern that will make it sound
you know a lot more alive.
And also I'm going to show you a new chord today, it's the G chord.
So this strumming pattern is a [G] downstroke, an upstroke, a chop, I'll explain that in a minute,
and an upstroke.
So when we put that together it sounds like this. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _
Okay and you can see that it [F] gives it a more interesting sound because the chop
is quite percussive.
To me it sounds a little bit like a drum kit when the drummer hits the snare.
And especially if you're the sort of person that might be you know busking on your own or
playing acoustic guitar then it's really going to be useful for you to get used to this strumming
pattern and it will make your playing sound much better.
Okay so let's begin.
Now the first thing
I want to show you is this new chord, the G chord.
I think you'll find it [Bb] straightforward,
it's the middle finger on the sixth string at fret three, the first finger on the fifth string
at fret two, and then these [Ab] two fingers, _ [Gm] the third finger goes on the second string at fret three,
[F] and the little finger goes right next to it on the first string at fret three.
So if you just
want to look at that chord diagram next to me just to clarify what those notes are, and you're going
to use the plectrum to strum [G] all the strings.
_ Now you should know by now, if you remember me
telling you in the last lesson, that you should be arching these fingers up and there should be
plenty of space underneath.
[Gb] [Gm] You know you should be holding down with lots of pressure and the
back of the finger shouldn't be accidentally touching the string behind it so [Em] that when you
strum all the notes it should sound [G] like this. _
_ _ Nice and clean and clear.
So if you [E] need to
practice that for a second, you know by all means pause the video and just make sure you've got that
right.
So this strumming pattern, so we're going to strum downwards and then upwards and then we're
going to do this [N] chop.
Right so let me explain that now.
Now what the chop is, is we're going to use
the palm of our hand to touch all the strings like this, and what happens is our hand comes, the palm
touches all the strings and then the plectrum follows through, but because we're touching the
strings all the notes are muted, like that.
Now you shouldn't be able to hear any notes at [G] all, if you can hear anything
like that, then you need to make sure you're holding down on those strings with more pressure
and they should be totally dead.
_ [Eb] _ _ [F] So that'll take a little bit of practice
and eventually you can bring your hand down and chop all in one motion like that. _ _ _ _
Okay so just to clarify, I'll tell you again, make sure that the palm of your hand is laying
across all those strings and [Eb] effectively you know killing the notes.
Okay so what happens is
_ [N] you're going to practice it until you can do it like that, nice and smooth, all in one motion.
_ _ _ _ Okay so that's the chop, that's how it works.
So when we put that into the strumming pattern, [G]
we're
up, _ _ chop and then up again.
So it'll sound like this. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Okay [N] now it's easier said than done, I expect that
I'll take you quite a bit of time to practice that, I mean I know it takes my students quite
a while before they really get the hang of it.
So that's brilliant, so go easy on yourself, that you
know, don't give yourself any pressure to be able to play that straight away, be patient with
yourself, stop the video, in fact watch the video several times if you need to, that's fine.
[F] Okay so and also once you've practiced that, you can apply it to the other chords that you know,
you can do it on [E] the E chord and [A] the A and [D] the D _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] and you're at a stage now that you can start
[F] experimenting with these chords and you can begin to you know create your own sequences and start
writing your own songs and as you learn more and more chords then you'll be able to write more and
more interesting songs.
Okay so that's what I want you to do, I want you to practice the G chord
as well as practicing the three other chords that we learned before
and I want you to practice that strumming pattern, the down, up, top, up and go and get on with that
and really dedicate yourself to it, you know, make sure you can really really do it smoothly.
Okay and I'll see you in a few days for the next segment of this e-course, we're going to learn
something a little bit different, we're going to move away from chords and we're going to learn
what's called the blues scale and I'm going to begin to teach you how [E] to improvise, so it's all
going to [Ab] get more exciting from here on in.
So thanks for joining me, go and get on with that,
go and begin practicing right now and also if you want to go and look at the website and check out
the archive and see if there's any songs you want [E] to learn because if you're brave enough to sort of
you know go and tackle those now then that would be brilliant and you can start to build a repertoire
of songs that you can play to people, you know, [Gbm] play at parties or whatever.
[D] So thanks for joining me, I'll see you in a few days for the next segment of this course, bye-bye. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _