I often tell people who are very new to a strumming instrument to put on a song they know well/naturally gets their head bobbing, hold the guitar, mute the strings with your fretting hand and just jam away with your strumming hand. Listen to it on repeat while just letting your strumming hand find the natural rhythm without worrying about the chord shapes and changes etc. Just find the rhythm! Music is all downstream of rhythm and at the end of the day you can make 1-3 notes sound pretty groovy over most contemporary music by just following the natural rhythm of the tune. Find the groove then worry about the harmony!

this puts my mind at ease and more in the rhythm. thank you

Wholeheartedly agree! Well said! If you're feeling the music and keeping in time it's not difficult for anyone to join in the singing. Counting the beats (as is demonstrated in the video) is much more beneficial (and musically correct) than mindless down up down strumming pattern nonsense. So pleased to know we're not alone in our views. Keep up the good work 👍

Yes! Trying to follow strumming patterns always used to mess me up and feel forced and awkward - I stopped paying attention to them years ago and now I know why. Thank you. 😊

You are 100% correct, forget strum pattern play what you hear, mimic the song. Miss a strum like you said but keep that arm moving in time.

So grateful how you simplified the whole concept about strumming patterns. Nothings is by the book when it comes to music. Is about feeling it from the heart. Thank you !

Great information. Thank you.

Strumming patterns… that’s like using footprint stickers on the floor to dance 😂✌🏽

Brilliant information for those newbies cos you just let go and feel it 🙌🇬🇧

I suffered from strumming patterns for quite a while. Then I started to learn funk and it was close to impossible. Learning funk style strumming, or "The Funky Chicken" massively improved my rhythm. No patterns required. Works for acoustic, too. Although, obviously, you miss the strings more than strike them so you can get that lovely acoustic ring. Anyway, funk taught me rhythm.

@matthewmaurysmith2486

16 күн бұрын

Good call! Definitely Funk style guitar is one of the best if not the best style to see the example of what I'm talking about. It's all about that constant arm swing. I used to butcher songs like Michael Jackson's " Rock With You " because I didn't have that steady swing thing figured out.

@tonyhudson8235

16 күн бұрын

@matthewmaurysmith2486 Oh I butcher every song. But at least I butcher it more humanely now.

Yes, you hit on something that has always crossed my mind. My strumming evolved by bashing out songs by ear intuitively way before KZread. When I tried to teach somebody a song I'd get stumped on explaining, " How are you strumming?" Me: " I don't know, the song goes like this." Watching KZread teachers over the last decades has helped me better explain something that came naturally just by playing. Of course there's dampening etc. But that came intuitively too. I understand some people need more guidance than others though

@matthewmaurysmith2486

21 күн бұрын

No doubt! It seems like in my first decade or so of teaching I just showed people stuff and gave real brief explanations and let them sink or swim. But then now, it seems like I'm meticulously describe everything. Of course I teach a lot of adults now ;-)

Great lesson! I appreciate that you clarified getting out of a rigid pattern and doing what sounds good to you for whatever song you're playing. Also, thanks for suggesting that it's ok to make up your own pattern if you want which I seem to do without thinking about it. Liked and subscribed.

Wow. Eye opening.

Dude! Thanks for that. I appreciate the simplification of a topic that can feel hard to approach as a fledgling guitarist. I've been working on a handful of riffs lately that have some timing challenges. JLH's Boom Boom is an example with 4/4 timing but in a call and response style where the "call" is 1/8 notes and the response is quarter notes. I relate to this conversation because while I was playing pretty accurately, the change between 1/8 notes and the quarter notes was lost on me until my teach pointed it out. You are pointing out the strumming version of this. Your arm is swinging in time, maybe 4/4, but you might only be strumming one, two, or three notes per bar. And in some cases, maybe you're strumming a couple of 1/8 notes on the down and squeezing in 1/16 notes on the up. Music and music theory continue to make me smile. What a gift for all of us. Looking forward to more from you!

One thing you should mention is how important the context is...If you are playing alone, if you also sing or if you play with other people. I have had the absolute unpleasant surprise of having a song down, so to speak, playing it alone and when other people come into the mix, nothing works. However, here is the paradox - if you constantly adapt your playing considering the other players, you will never significantly advance your skills, there is something about playing alone that opens up your creativity. So I have reached the conclusion that there should be 3 separate distinct rulebooks - 1 for Alone, one for Alone + Your voice and One for everything else.

Smoking a joint helps. GROOVIN MAN

great advice!

@matthewmaurysmith2486

20 күн бұрын

Glad it was helpful!

BASED. Liked and Subscribed!

@jamesrobertson4035

18 күн бұрын

LOVE THIS! I'm the worst guitarist I know (even compared to those youtubers who are 6 and have been playing for 20 days!) Strumming is soooooo hard, and to maintain a pattern for a whole song! I just Jam "noise" & rhythms that sound decent, instead of playing actual songs (kind of what you are saying. But I've only been playing since 1974 so naturally I'm still TERRIBLE!

Hey man very nice explanation with plenty of examples to show what you mean by it. i just picked up the guitar this week and have been obsessed with teaching myself, clocking in 40+ hours already. Chord fingering has been fairly easy so far and ive learned the main riff of Rivers of Babylon by Sublime, however when i get into the verse and attempting these "patterns" i was doing exactly what you said.. very rigid arm movements to try and emulate what i was hearing, but to no avail. You may have just opened my eyes a bit on the strumming end of learning the guitar and i intend to practice this later and see if i feel any difference with it. it seems so obvious having it broken down the way you did, anyways, im grateful for the lesson! You seem like a very understanding teacher, looking forward to more videos!

@matthewmaurysmith2486

21 күн бұрын

Thanks for that feedback! You know, I played for a long time and I might have been swinging my arm regularly, I may have also not been on certain songs, but I can definitely say I wasn't thinking about it that way and I had a lot of Rhythm issues. Epiphany came when I watched other players whose arms were wagging in a very relaxed and even way even when they weren't hitting the strings. The thing was, I'd been having problems for a while and when I saw that it just hit me, that's what I've been missing! The other thing I did was I learn how to strum from strumming notation, playing exercises out of books. Particularly strumming patterns where you have eighth note rhythms and down up motions. That helps tremendously! But I can definitely tell you it wasn't just like a flipping of the switch, it definitely was a process. But I feel like if you just know about it, that's the biggest thing, and then everything else should you starts getting you there...

@MockyMak

21 күн бұрын

@matthewmaurysmith2486 I found myself noticing the arm movement but wasn't really sure what it was I was seeing, just that they were clearly doing something different than what I was doing. Sometimes you just need to hear it and see it explained showing the right and wrong movements. It's when you showed the rigid motion that it all clicked. I think of a lot of the guitar lesson videos I watch are missing the beginner perspective and just expect people to fully grasp everything all at once. But to show the mistake and then the right way.. You're onto something here, keep it up!

Good video. I've been playing for many decades and get plenty of compliments as a lead guitarist, particularly these days, but over the years I have gotten a lot more for my rhythm playing, which is a combination of acoustic strumming from my folk music beginnings and using the more muted bass string downstrokes from my electric playing applied to my acoustic. Basically, I recommend thinking of strumming your rhythm like a percussionist plays against a drummer in a band. Let go and go with the feeling you have for the music. Very few songs require a specific strum pattern to really pull off the effect of the original and often only sections of a song. The acoustic parts of Boston's songs and the back beat upstroke emphasis on the latter half of the verses in Born to be Wild spring to mind. Other than those exceptions, go with what you feel. Thanks for bringing this up. It's not talked about enough.

@matthewmaurysmith2486

16 күн бұрын

Definitely not talked about enough! And to make matters worse, ultimate guitar puts those strumming pattern notations at the beginning of songs, so many players I work with have held themselves back unknowingly by obsessing over that strumming pattern stuff, meanwhile they haven't even gotten the chord switches down quick enough to maintain it... I've got a couple of ideas I use in lessons to help people work through that when they're trying to learn how to strum and sing songs...

I fully agree. I have never follow a rigid strumming pattern. I go more with a natural feel for the song I'm playing/learning. To follow a rigid strumming pattern would bore the crap out of me. For me i find the best way to learn a song is to listen to the original and try to get feel for it and then i might try to add something or take something away or even play the song with a different tempo slower/faster. Following rigid strumming patterns just slows beginners down.🎤🎸🎼🎵🎶🎵🎶

Thank you….

It’s all about “feel”

@matthewmaurysmith2486

20 күн бұрын

Simply put, but that says it all! I think that's what bothers me about strumming patterns. That somehow the music relies on a repetitive set pattern. The Magic in listening someone's strumming when it's good is that they are NOT following a pattern.... it's very much in the zone or doing it by feel thing as to when you let the pic hit the strings are not hit the strings, as long as you have that mechanism of the consistent arm swing, you can let the magic happen from there

@liberalsrmentallyflawed3611

16 күн бұрын

Just saying it's all about feel. Is only half of the process. Knowing what time signature the song is in is the most important. Rythum wise that is. And knowing how many beats each chord gets.some chords split a measure and sometimes a chord holds for more than 1 measure.

Amen!

More Tips pls

Yes, you're right. It's hard to teach.

This helped. Thanks. However I do think standard strumming patterns are useful as they inform of variations, otherwise its easy to consistently fall back to same old pattern for every song. I myself have a strumming pattern that I've used for 50+ years and I seem to always fall back on it by instinct. I strive to get away from it. And of course some styles of music require certain patterns otherwise the style would not be evident, eg country boom chika, spanish, reggae, etc....None-the-less I appreciate your advice. 6/4 time was excellent. You mentioned 3/3 but maybe next time you could include.

@matthewmaurysmith2486

15 күн бұрын

Really that video is just the beginning of what I suggest to learn good Rhythm skills. It's definitely a good idea to work through a book that has lots of different strumming patterns written out of notation and to try to count and read them. There's probably a bunch of books out there that have that sort of thing in it, recently I've been using a book by Jody Fisher called "I used to Play Guitar" (lol) but I've worked through the first half of it and it's just page after page of strumming patterns and all kinds of different time signatures and different types of Beats used...

what happens to the up-down arm swing if the rhythm uses dotted notes?

@matthewmaurysmith2486

16 күн бұрын

I assume you mean if you were say, swinging your arm up and down with an eighth note Rhythm and then all of the sudden there's a 16th note subdivision happening somewhere? That could of course occur with a dotted eighth note rhythm. So, I call it "doubling up", and I think it's probably a hard thing to explain to someone, but essentially it's when you're swinging your arms steadily and then you have a burst of Beats that are double the speed. It feels really natural to do that, so I just call it "doubling up" LOL ... an example would be if you had a measure of all eighth notes and you were swinging down up, down up, down up with the 1 & 2 & 3 & but then when you get to beat four you double up and play 16th notes to a 4 e & a count. Or, if you had three beats of eighth notes and then on the 4th beat it's a dotted eighth note, I imagine you could just delay that second arm swing and try to land it right on the last 16th note of that fourth beat.... but as I sit here and try both of those things, I don't recommend that last thing I said. It seems like if you're going to have a dotted subdivision you're better off just swinging your arm to the 16th note rhythm throughout the entire measure so that when that 16th note lands your arm is already subdividing that beat

I’ve always been confused when someone comments on a video and says “nice song! What’s the strumming pattern?” I think, “didn’t you just hear it?”

@liberalsrmentallyflawed3611

16 күн бұрын

They may of asked that because you were all over the place and really, out of time.

Well yeah those types of lessons going on up down up ect just sucks the life out it imo. Strumming is actually one of the last things to fall into place imo as it’s not the fretting hand as one would think

❤❤❤❤😊😊😊😊

Hmm, this is kind of like what we just learned about in our lesson today how to help my f barcord remeber

@matthewmaurysmith2486

21 күн бұрын

I'm trying to send you some sheets but my scanner didn't work... but I'll get them to you before our internet lesson Sunday. I'm waiting for someone to say, this is outrageous of course there's a such thing as strumming patterns LOL

@LucidDrill

21 күн бұрын

@@matthewmaurysmith2486 ok

And when you play like that. Makes singing along very annoying. When the rythum player is all over the place...

You put useful information across but in a disorganised and musically ill-defined manner.

I never follow strumming patterns. If I'm happy with what comes out of me, and people like it, I'm doing it correctly, bottom line...If it's coming out differently than the original then so what?!..Even the original artist plays their own stuff differently, and in multiple ways, than they first did..Go with, If it feels good, it is good..That's all you need.

@liberalsrmentallyflawed3611

16 күн бұрын

And that is why people can't sing along to your playing.

I HATE all that down up down BS. FEEL IT AND PLAY IT!

I follow strumming patterns and find that they work so you are misguiding beginner players

@brin57

17 күн бұрын

He's not misguiding anyone. He's trying to tune people into hearing and feeling the rhythm and playing accordingly. If someone has any musical aptitude, this is natural and instinctive to do, and only needs this kind of prompting to get on board. This is what gets people, especially beginners 'Playing' music, and not getting caught up in the intricacies. That can come later once they're hooked and desire to dig deeper. Millions of people have been turned off playing instruments because teachers tried to get them bogged down in the details first.

@liberalsrmentallyflawed3611

16 күн бұрын

​@@brin57And that is why people can't sing along to some players. They play by what they're feeling and actually their timing is off..

@davidgray4682

16 күн бұрын

​@@brin57 it doesn't matter what you do you are still following a strumming pattern so it is misleading it may be felt or it may be systematic you are still playing a pattern

@matthewmaurysmith2486

15 күн бұрын

​@liberalsrmentallyflawed3611 I . It seems that you misunderstood what others meant when they described it as "playing by feel." What they did NOT mean was not following the counting and not following the time signature, which would be the only thing I can imagine that would make it impossible for a singer to sing along with someone's playing. when you are constantly swinging your arm you should be doing it to the time signature. So, the whole point of doing it is to stay true to the meter. Whether you do an upstream on beat 3 or you don't do one on beat four or you missed the downstream on beat two should be irrelevant as long as you are following the overall time signature of the song. The "doing it by feel" comments referred to the fact that instead of rigidly following a strict strumming pattern on every measure, you should have the freedom to very it's slightly without changing the overall Rhythm of the song... instead of playing a pre-planned pattern, you are instead responding spontaneously in the moment, varying your strumming to reflect changes in Dynamics and intensity, highlighting different sections or creating the ebbs and flows of different moods as a song goes through its different parts.

@matthewmaurysmith2486

15 күн бұрын

​@@davidgray4682 Of course, I was being slightly facetious when I said that strumming patterns "don't exist". But I thought that would be pretty obvious. Based on the comments, it was. My advice would only be misleading if you didn't understand what I was trying to describe about how the strumming patterns are created from the constant swinging of your arm, and the exact pattern can vary slightly from measure to measure without disturbing the rhythmic coherency of the song. Every song is different and some songs require a certain pattern to establish their iconic sound. For instance, when I play Big Mouth Strikes Again by the smiths, I always strum it exactly the way Johnny Marr does. But truthfully, as long as your arm is swinging constantly, you could make slight variations and nobody would ever notice. So, my point is is that it would be a mistake to focus on following an exact strumming pattern instead of just figuring out what the time signature is and Swinging your arm constantly to that meter and THEN let yourself arrive at whatever strumming pattern you play.

Don't drag. Get to the point. We're also players.

@Mo-xx9gg

4 күн бұрын

If you are a "player", why do you need this? 🤔 You don't get to "demand" when watching free content! There were several useful points all the way through the video!