INSTANTLY Make Your Strumming Sound Better TODAY!

So I get a lot of comments on YouTube of guitar students asking me how do I make my strumming sound more exciting and more cool. I feel like I'm always doing the same strumming pattern. So I'm going to give you some tips that you can use to make your strumming start sounding better today. And we're going to start off first with a quick tip about the pick. Students ask me this all the time. Lauren, are you doing something special with your pick? And the answer is kinda yes. 1. I'm relaxing my hand as much as possible. A lot of times in the beginning students, they're so stiff that they're strumming sounds like that because they're holding onto this pick with a death grip because they don't want it to fall on the floor. So tip number one is just work on starting to relax your wrist. Okay. Because the more relaxed your wrist, the more natural your strumming is going to sound. It is going to allow the guitar to ring out more. More. Okay. The other tip is the angle of the pick. Okay. So when I am strumming down, the pointy part of my pick angles upwards. Okay. And when I am strumming up, the pointy part of my pick angles downward. So my pick is kind of doing this as I'm strumming up and down the guitar. Okay. So if you see my wrist.

My wrist is slightly. I'm kind of doing, like, this swinging motion with my wrist. It's slightly adjusting.

So that that pick can do that up and down motion. So pay attention to that, because that's one tip that can instantly make your guitar and your strumming start sounding better. So now let's get into specific strumming examples. I'm going to show you how you can take one strumming pattern and turn it into something amazing. So let's start off with a simple strumming pattern. Okay. We're going to be using this strumming pattern throughout this entire lesson. And I'm going to show you how you can turn it into many different things by just adding something in that we call dynamics. All right? But first, let's go over what that strumming pattern is. So this is going to be an eighth note strumming pattern. We're going to count it 1, 2, and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And. And it's going to be played by down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. So it's going to sound like this. Ready?

So that is a very, very Common strumming pattern. And most people will use that for a song all the way, beginning to end.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. But after you play a bunch of songs using that strumming pattern, things might start getting old. So what can we do to spice up this strumming pattern? When we're going to talk about dynamics, how loud or how soft we play something on the guitar, and oftentimes these are called accents, and they just look like a little carrot above a strumming pattern. Okay, so. So for the first example, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that strumming pattern I just showed you, and I'm going to put accents above the 2 and the 4B. And the reason we're going to do this is when you listen to a song, oftentimes the snare drum, when you play with a band is played on beats two and four. And if we're playing by ourselves, a lot of times we don't have a band. So we're going to kind of make. Mimic the drum pattern by just accenting, Playing the guitar a little bit louder on two and four. So here's what it's going to sound like. One, two, ready? And.

Okay. You can hear it's a little bit different because a little bit same strumming pattern, but now there's a little drive to it. Right, let's listen to the first one. Without the accents.

Everything'S nice and even kiltered, Right? Nothing wrong with that. Now let's put the accents in. Ready? One and two and three and four. And one and two and three and four.

Okay. Really give some drive to the song. And now if you play it really fast.

Great strumming pattern for, like, Johnny Cash songs. I think of, like, Folsom Prism Blues. I'm like, yeah.

Great little strumming pattern that you can use, but you can see, okay, we took a really kind of drab strumming pattern, and we turned it into something different and special by just adding some accents. So let's take that same element, those same accents, and we're going to do something called the karate chop. All right, now, this is a technique that I teach in my strumming course. Right? This is kind of the stuff I teach in my strumming course. But what we're going to do is we're going to keep the accents on 2 and 4. Except this time, instead of really playing the guitar harder, I kind of actually hit the body of my guitar almost with, like, the knuckle of my pinky or my pinky hand. Because remember, we want a loose wrist when we're strumming. So I'm going to take my guitar and I'm going to boom. I'm going to chop the body of the guitar. Now, because I'm playing an acoustic. Or if you have a hollow body guitar, it's hollow, so it acts like a drum. So we're going to get percussive with our strumming. Same strumming pattern I just showed you. 1 and 2, 3, M. 4 or 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 M. Except this time, instead of strumming harder, we're going to hit the body of the guitar. Ready? This is what it's going to sound like. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay. You hear that hollowness of the guitar coming through. And don't be afraid to hit your guitar. You're not going to hurt it. Okay. You're not going to break the guitar. I know. You see, probably see on the close up, I've got some missing pieces on my guitar. It's old. It's from strumming. It happens. All right. But this is a great. Think of something like Rolling on the river, you know.

Or Wake Up Maggie. That's another song that I teach that percussive rhythm in. It's really cool. And it sounds very different from what we just did. So here's the first example. Ready? With just the accents. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Now here's with the percussion. Ready?

Very, very different sound again. We've done three strumming patterns with the same rhythm. We're just adding different types of dynamics in into the mix to make it more interesting and sound cooler. So let's move our accent around again. Let's play it someplace different. We're going to put it over the third beat and we're going to play a chord progression. We'll just do G, E minor, C, D. All right. And here's what it's going to sound like. Ready? One, two. Here we go.

Okay. Gives a little. It's a different movement of the guitar. It's like, oh, something is drawing us on that third beat. Now if we. This is. Would sound really good if you had two chords for two measures. So say you were playing two measures of G in a row, two measures of E. This is what it would sound like with a double measure. Really changes up the whole dynamics. Ready? So we have.

That's gonna sound so much better than just going.

You're like, yeah, no, you can hear the difference now. That that first strumming pattern is just. It's just very flat. Right. And that's what separates the more beginner guitar players to more of the late beginner. Intermediate. Probably more in the intermediate realm is because you're starting to incorporate dynamics to give feeling and emotion and flow to the music. Again, the way I like to do this is if you have a chord for two measures, I would like to accent the first beat on the first measure and then play through the rest of the strumming pattern. Let me show you what I mean by that. So we got 1, 2, ready, and.

Very cool. Very different from the other one that we just did.

Very different. Now, here's the first one.

There's something big about it. There's something dramatic about putting that accent on the one and then just having lots of quiet strumming afterwards. Again, the dynamics loud versus soft.

And if you watch my strumming hand, I'm not strumming the whole chord. I'm kind of sticking to the bottom three or four strings. People ask me this all the time. Lauren, when you're strumming to get all the strings on a down strum, typically, yeah, I'm getting all the strings, but on up strums, usually only getting three or four strings. But what if you concentrated your effort on just the bottom three or four strings? You make that first strum so much bigger.

Right.

So all you're doing, literally all you're doing is you're adding an accent. But it's the same strumming pattern. It's this strumming pattern. We've just put a little bit of dynamics behind it to make your guitar come to life. Another great thing I want to show you is crescendoing. Okay. It's something that is used to kind of transition between sections of a song. I think it's really great if you have a verse and you're coming into a chorus to do this type of crescendo. So I'm going to use that same chord progression, the G, G, E minor, E minor, C, C, D, D. But what I'm going to do on the last D is I'm going to change from down, up, down, up strumming pattern to all downs 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And. Except now I'm going to get louder as I go. So instead of keeping the dynamics flat, we're going to make them grow and get bigger. Let me show you what I mean.

Here it comes. Ready?

Okay. So what did you hear? You heard on that last D? I Just used that very simple strumming pattern.

And then it went 1 and 2 and 3.

So I started really soft using less strings of the chord. Might have started just by using two strings. And then I grew to three, and then I grew to four to get that bass note in there, make it bigger, and then boom, I transitioned over into the chorus. So what I'm going to do, let's mix up that last strumming pattern I showed you with the accent on the one. Okay. So you heard what it sounded like with just that dull one and two and three. Okay, now I'm going to do is going to use the accent on the one, and I'm going to put the crescendo on the end and listen to how it completely changes the feel of what you're doing. Ready? Here we go. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. M.

Here comes the crescendo part. Ready?

All right. And there's a bonus little strum. I mean, so that's a really cool example. We went from a verse crescendoed into a chorus. And the chorus, you know, this fake chorus. What did I do? I used the same exact strumming pattern that I was using in the verse. Except now, instead of the small notes being down here, kept the small notes at the top. Listen, I went 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and all downs now.

Still sounds really cool.

Now, if you learned a lot from just this one lesson, I have an entire course on strumming where we go through percussive rhythms. I go over rock rhythms, I go over accented rhythms, how to add in even more dynamics into your playing, how to change things up and get more feeling from your strumming. So if you're looking for a full course on just how to make your strumming go from good to great, then I highly recommend scrolling down to the description below and checking out my expressive rhythm and strumming course. It's designed to take you from an absolute beginner with strumming to more of an intermediate level player. The type of guitar and rhythm player where people go, wow, you sound really good. So if you're ready to take your strumming to the next level, scroll down to the link in the description below. I look forward to seeing you in my strumming course.