Master Strumming: Guitar Strumming Workout for Beginners

So you're learning to play the guitar, and you are having trouble with strumming and timing and playing in time and keeping up with rhythm. So I put together a strumming workout for you. This is what I do with my students. What I used to do in person and what I do in my guitar courses is we sit down and we really focus on timing and working through a number of different strumming patterns. So a lot of students, they really want to go fast in the beginning, but you've learned a lot by going slow and working your way up. And that's exactly what we're going to do in this video is I'm going to show you a bunch of different strumming patterns. We're going to start off very, very basic, very simple, at a slow tempo. And then slowly, we're going to increase the tempo, and I want you to play along and use this as a practice workout. This is probably going to be about five or six minutes, which is a great little practice routine for strumming and timing. So first, some basics. We're going to be using two types of strumming patterns. One is what we call a quarter note, and that's just counting to four. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. Just like there's four quarters and a dollar bill, that's what we're going to be doing. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. And each one of those is going to get a down strum. All right? So it's going to be down, down, down, down. That's the basics of what we're doing. The other strum we're going to be doing is called an eighth note strumming pattern. Okay. And that's where our up strums come in. Those are counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and or down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Okay, so that's how we're going to play eighth notes, and I'll go over those again when we get to the next level. So the first level of this pattern is really just focusing in on timing with quarter notes. Another quick tip before we get started. A lot of students who are beginners, they're like, lauren, why does my guitar sound so bad compared to yours? Because a lot of students, they start by strumming like this.

And they're like sn snapping the strings. And what it is, is you have a very, very stiff arm and forearm. Usually you want to relax. There should be some flexibility in the wrist. Very, very hard for beginners to do because it's a New mechanic. So obviously you're usually a lot more tense than you need to be. The key is to try and relax your strumming hand as much as possible. If you cannot relax your strumming hand, I highly recommend you switch out to a thin pair. What's a thin pick? I Recommend Something like 43 or 50. It'll take a little bit out of the curse out of the strumming from you having a really tight hand. It'll automatically make the guitar sound a lot nicer. So that's tip number one. Try a thinner pick. Also, remember to breathe. Don't hold your breath through the entire workout. Breathe. Try and relax as much as possible. Okay, the chord we're going to be using is an E minor chord. I just show you that real quickly. If you need an in depth lesson, we'll put a video up here for you guys. But first finger on the second fret of the A string. Second finger right below on the D string and you get to strum all six strings. Okay. Some people play with their second and third fingers. That's perfectly fine too. I find the E minor chord is usually a nice easy chord that a lot of students can play without having too many muted strings. Okay, so that's the chord we're going to be using. Let's jump into our first exercise. So I'm going to be using something called a metronome. And this is a really great tool to work on. Timing and all it is is it's a heartbeat. Think of it like a heart monitor for music. Okay, so you're going to hear this clicking. Okay, so this is set for 60 beats per minute. And think of beats per minute. It's the speed at which we're going to play music. Think of it like miles per hour in a car or kilometers per hour in a car. And I'm from Boston, so I apologize if I say ka. Sometimes it happens. I'm very, very sorry. So we have 60 beats per minute. Okay. And this click is a strum for us. Okay. So every time we hear a click, we're going to do a down strum. So let's just work on that. Now I do this in my 7 level guitar system and my strumming course. We work with the metronome. And some students find it easier to play with the drum track. And that's why I play in the course because a lot of students find it a lot easier to play along with me. It's oftentimes much easier to work off someone else's timing. So that's what we're going to do here. We're just going to practice this. So here's our click. 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. And down, down, down, down.

And 1, 2, 3, 4. Great. So that's the bass. And you can see, you know, this is 60 beats per minute. So this is relatively slow for music. And for some people you might find yourself rushing and getting ahead of the time. And that's why it's important to practice at slower speeds. It's actually easier to play at a faster speed than keep time at a slower speed. So this will really, really help you. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through just a couple simple strumming patterns here. This is to really, really work on timing. We're going to do quarter notes. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then we're going to introduce a rest. Now here, usually a rest in music means you completely mute the sound. For us, we're just going to indicate it as not strumming. Okay, so it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 3, no strum on 4. And then the next one is 1, 2, no strum on 3, 4. And then the next one Is 1, no strum on 2, 3, 4. This way you just work on moving through each of these strumming patterns. Now when we come to the rest, do not stop your hand. I want you to practice strumming but not making any sound with the strings. This is going to help you keep your timing. Your strumming hand is your timekeeper. All right? So, so always keep it moving. All right, so here's our metronome. 2, 3, 4. Always listen to get the speed first. All right, we're going to play each of these strumming patterns four times each. Okay? And I'll try not to lose count. So we're going to start off. Ready? Here we go. And 1, 2. E minor chord 4. And 1, 2, 3, 4.

Next pattern. One, two, three.

One more time.

Next pattern.

Next one, ready?

Now you might have found that difficult because it was so slow. You might have found it easy because maybe you've been doing some strumming. But it's a great warm up to get you really focusing in on timing. Okay. And that's such an important skill, especially if you want to play music with others or you want to play along to a song. All right, so that's level one. We're going to move on to level two, which is going to be introducing some up strums. All right, we're going to start off with the quarter note pattern just for you to get the tempo. Because at this point we're going to start at 60 bpms. Then we're going to go up to 80, then we're going to go to 100. So it's going to get faster and faster and faster. So we want to get that tempo first. So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4. But then we're going to introduce some up strums and we're going to move these through as well. So the first pattern is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4. And so that's going to be down, down, down, down, up. The next one's going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4. So it'll be up strum after 3. Then we're going to do 1, 2 and 3, 4. Then 1 and 2, 3, 4. And then we're going to do 1,2 and 3 and 4. So we're going to double up on our last strumming pattern. So we're going to start this off 60 bpms. Let's take a listen.

Let's get our E minor chord in place.

Okay, so this is our tempo. We got 1, 2, 3, 4. M.

Next one.

Next pattern.

Next one.

Next one.

Last one.

One more time.

I might have done an extra one on the end. I couldn't remember. So when you do these things in repetition, sometimes it's hard to count, even for me. So for some of you, this might have been tricky, going from one strumming pattern to another. For other people, you might have noticed that maybe you were rushing the up strums. And if you're rushing the up strums could mean that there's just again a little bit of tension. Try and remember to relax and breathe as you're doing these exercises, okay? Something to keep in mind if you found it difficult going from one strumming pattern right into the next. When we play music, remember sometimes we're going to use one strumming pattern on the verse, one strumming pattern on the chorus. Sometimes we use a couple different strumming patterns in the verses and choruses. So it's a very, very common thing. So you're going to want to get used to going between one strumming pattern into another. So let's boost this up. Let's take this to level three. We're going to be going to 80 beats per minute. So here's our tempo. So it's a little bit faster. So we. One, two, three, four. Eighth notes, one and two and three and Four and. Okay, let's get our E chord. Ready? And one, two, here we go. And one.

Next chord.

Next one.

Next one.

Next one.

Next one.

Well done. And remember, you can always use the settings cog. If I'm still going too fast, you need things to be a little bit slower. You can always use the settings cog to slow me down even more. We're going to jump up now. I think this is level four. We're going to do 100 beats per minute. And I'm going to show you a tip for what you can do for level five.

All right, so here's 100 beats per minute. We're really cooking now. Okay, you can hear that's going 1, 2, 3, 4, 8th 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And so we're going much faster now. All right, so here we go. And 1, 2, 3, 4.

Next one.

Next one.

Next one.

Next one.

Last one.

One more time.

So you can see as we get faster, it gets more and more important to be more relaxed and really just starting to feel the music. But don't be afraid if you're counting in your head still, it's perfectly fine, perfectly normal. To take this to the next level. I would usually have students add in a chord progression. So we're doing each strumming pattern four times. So. So usually I would tell students, hey, let's take a chord progression like G, E minor, C and D, and let's put that over the strumming pattern now, because now it's going to sound more like a song. So let's give that a try. What do you think? Let's try level five now. We're going to keep it at 100 beats per minute here. Or maybe I'll slow it down to 80, because you guys are going to have to throw in some chord changes. All right, so we're going to go a little bit slower. Go to 80. So here's our tempo. So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4. And it'd be G, E minor, C, D. Okay, that's the four chords they're going to be using. So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4.

Next one.

That sounds nice.

Next one.

Sa.

So that gives you a feel of some of the things I do inside my seven level guitar system with students or even my strumming course. I believe it's very, very important to work with a metronome. It's very, very important to work on playing together with someone in a practice routine like this over video and you can see how just by adding a simple chord progression all of those strumming patterns all of a sudden became very musical. Right? Right. They all sounded really really good with just a simple chord progression. G E minor C D There's so many chords you play thousands of songs with just those four chords. So it just goes to show you music is as easy as taking a strumming pattern and adding a chord progression and guess what? You've got a song. So if you really like this workout and want to take your strumming to the next level so highly recommend you check out my seven level guitar system. I'll put a link in the description below. These are the types of exercises we do within that course. A lot of application work but you can see how taking some simple fundamental things and putting them together creates beautiful music and makes playing the guitar so much fun. Hope to see you in a course or another lesson real soon.