STRUMMING TIPS: Coordinating Both Hands While Strumming

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this video, I'm going to answer a question that a lot of students ask me, which is, Lauren, how do I work on my timing? How do I get my right hand in my left hand to sync up when I'm playing rhythm? So we're going to talk about that in this lesson video.

So this is a question I commonly get asked by a lot of my guitar students. Usually most people can pick up the, you know, the beginner strumming patterns, like four down strums. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. Most people don't have a hard time with those strumming patterns. What happens is their timing tends to get a little bit off when they start going to more intricate strumming patterns, like 8th note strumming patterns, where we have up strums, the timing gets off or their chord changing hand seems to be lagging behind their strumming hand. So what can we do to kind of even out these two things? So I'm going to give you some tips in this video on what you can do to improve upon those skills. Hey, everyone, don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. This way, YouTube lets you know when I release more videos just like this one. So the first thing I'm going to touch upon in this video is just strictly timing the timing and the strumming of the right hand. So for a lot of people, where the hiccup comes with timing and rhythm is the up strum. Like I said before, everyone can do down strums. But when we do up strum, sometimes people get this.

Almost like this little hiccup on their up strum. It's like there's a delay on the up. And part of that comes from the fact that the strumming hand is not completely relaxed yet. So what I tell people when we're trying to work out this particular issue, we'll just pick one chord, pick an easy chord, like an E minor chord, and just sit and over exaggerate the up strum for now. So if we're going to do just an eighth note strumming pattern, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Now relax the hand down and relax the hand up. What happens is people tend to force the up strum. You tend to, you get down here and you go, oh crap, I got to come back up. And you force the up strum. So don't force it, relax it up. So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and all right, so that's one thing to do. Just go through. And then when we start removing strums, so say we're going to do 1, 2, 3 and 4. And a very common strumming pattern. Down, down, down, up, down, up, 1, 2, 3, and 4. And I always tell students, even though you're not putting an up strum after the one or an up strum after the two, your hand is still strumming up. Watch my strumming hand. 1, 2, 3, and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4. And so even though I'm not playing those up strums, I'm keeping the rhythm going. A lot of students as they do this, they go, one, the fan gets stuck down here, then they go two, the hand gets stuck and then they go three, and then they rush to get those ups. So if you keep going this strumming hand on eighth notes, even though you're not playing all the strums, just keep that going down, up, down, up, 1, 2, 3 and 4. And obviously I'm over exaggerating a little bit. I wouldn't usually move my hand that much, but that's something to practice on. Even though you're not strumming an up strum, keep it in there. Just don't hit the strings. And a lot of times that helps people out with a lot of timing issues, the strumming hand. So one, slow it down. Give your brain time to process that you're trying to relax your hand. Okay. And then two, keep the strumming going. Keep the rhythm going in your strumming hand. And I bet you'll see improvements in your strumming within probably about a week. Don't forget to give me a thumbs up on this video. It really helps YouTube show more of my videos to people just like you. So if you get a second, just hit, hit that like, button below and we'll get back into the video. Now, another question I commonly get asked about timing issues with rhythm on guitar is, you know, my chord changers are much slower than my rhythm hands. So this is what it ends up sounding like. You start doing this.

Sound familiar? So there's this big pause while you're trying to change chords. And I always tell students, because this, I would say this happens to like almost everyone is your chord changes take a little bit longer to develop than the speed of your strumming hand. Usually people can develop their strumming hand very quickly. There's less your strumming hand is doing. So I tell students, stop making the strumming hand. Wait for your fretting hand. What do I mean? So if I'm going to do a strumming pattern, I'm going to go back to that. 1, 2, 3, and 4. And watch my fretting hand. Okay? Watch what I'm going to do. 1, 2, 3, and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2,. 3 and 4. And 1, two, three, and four. And. Did you see that? My strumming hand never stopped. So it actually the timing sounded good, but you could see I was building my chords because most people in the beginning, they build their chords one finger at a time until they can get their fingers moving together. I do have a good exercise for that. I'll put a link up here if you guys want to go check that out. How to get your fingers moving a little bit better. But most people build their chords one finger at a time. So a way to solve this is to keep the strumming hand going because it'll still sound more musical if the strumming keeps going versus if the strumming stops. So I tell people, force the fretting hand to catch up to the strumming hand. Everyone does this.

And it just sounds choppy. It doesn't sound very musical because you're actually stopping the guitar. You're stopping the music. So once again, keep the strumming pattern going and then switch chords. Okay? And I don't care if it takes you the whole strumming pattern. If it takes you the whole measure to change the chord, that's okay. At least the timing and the rhythm of the music will sound good. And. And that's the goal is to do the best you can, make your guitar sound as good as you can for the level that you're at. And that's what I do with my seven level guitar system is I basically teach students, level by level, how to work through learning the guitar step by step. You know, it's not about perfection in the beginning. It's about understanding the skills for where you're at. So, like karate, if you're a white belt, you can't learn the black belt skills at the white belt level. And a lot of people do that with guitar. They're jumping way too far ahead, learning skills that are way above their head, and then they get frustrated and they stop. So that's why I think, you know, having a leveling system like my guitar course helps people work through some of these mechanics and learn things in the right order and gives them enough time to kind of build the structure and foundation around learning guitar, so I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson on syncing up your rhythm and timing with your two hands. Give that a try. And once again, YouTube's going to pop up some videos over here. Feel free to go check those out, but also I'll put a link below to my guitar course if you're interested in learning how to improve your strumming. I do go over lots of different strumming patterns in that course, so I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.