Chords for How to Play Acoustic Guitar - Lessons for Beginners - Strumming Chords Pt. 2

_ _ _ _ Now, let's take these core ideas that we've been discussing and put them all together
to strum a chord evenly in time.
Just reviewing a little bit here, to keep nice even time, we keep our elbows swinging
nicely and evenly [F#] to hit those down strokes.
Here come the up strokes.
_ [N] When I just count down four of these down strokes, one, two, three, four, one, two,
three, four, then I have a measure of music.
In this case, a measure is made up of four beats.
Each of those [F#] beats is a quarter.
[F] We call those quarter note beats.
_ When I add in the up strokes, again, just by stroking very evenly but [D#] hitting the strings
on the way back up, I have this one, two, [F#] three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one,
two, three, four, [D#] five, six, seven, eight.
Each one of those beats is an eighth note beat.
I have quarters and [F#] eighths.
_ [Dm] Whether you have four of them in one section or eight of them grouped together, it makes
a measure of music.
So four quarters or eight eighths is one whole or one measure.
We've been reviewing and we just went over counting and strumming evenly.
We know how to build a chord as we learned over here.
Again, we're going to press not too [Em] hard.
Don't make yourself crazy.
You are going to build up calluses on your left hand.
It's good for you.
It might hurt for the first week or so, but you don't have to press so hard that you get bone pain.
We're just going to build it up, make the ends of your fingers a little bit tougher
[C] pressing down the strings.
Let's take our chord and let's take a quarter note beat, an even quarter note beat, and
strum it nice and easy.
_ One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Just try and do that so you get a nice clean sound.
You don't have to strum too hard.
You don't have to press too hard.
You don't even have to think about what your left [Em] hand is doing because it's staying planted.
[C] _ Now we're going to play it [Em] in eighths instead of in quarters.
So I'm going to catch the upstrokes.
Ready?
Here we go.
_ _ _ One, one and two.
_ _ Okay? Okay.
Do that and you are officially strumming chords.
Okay, so all we're going to concern ourselves with here is first finding a measure of music.
We're just going to find those four beats.
Then we're going to start to chuck along to it, just muted strings.
And then we're going to add our chord to it.
_ _ _ So first let's bring up a click track and we'll just start to count along. _ _ _ _
One, two, three, two, [F#] two, three, four.
Okay?
One, two, three, two.
Let's bring in the chucks.
Here we go.
One, two, three, four.
Just downstrokes right where you hear that click track going.
And when you're comfortable with that, you start to get into a little bit of a groove
with your right hand.
We're going to bring in our chord.
One, two, three.
Here we [C] go.
_ _ _ That's it.
Nice and easy.
Just _ [Em] _ _ four beats. _ _
Now we're playing quarter notes here.
One strum per beat.
_ Once we get comfortable with that, we can start to bring in an eighth note strum, which
is two strums per beat, hitting upstrokes like this.
Here we go. _ _ _ _
That's it.
Back to quarters, _ _ _ two, back to eighths.
Here we go. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Now as that click track goes in, now we're going to bring in the bass.
And what you're going to hear is the bass note is going to kind of plant that first
quarter note for us.
We're going to hear a strong downbeat on the first beat of each measure.
So we're going to bring the click back around and then bring in the bass.
And you're going to hear the boom, three, _ [C] boom, two, three.
Here it comes, two, three, three.
Now strum along.
_ _ _ Hear that bass planting that note for us, cuing us each time we're at the top of a measure.
_ Now let's bring those eighths back in. _ _ _ _ _
That's it.
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _