I’ll show you how to dress up your strumming and make it more musical. In the last lesson we went though the G-D-A minor 7-C progression, and we kept the strumming quite simple so you could focus on making the chord changes smoothly.

Now we’re make your strumming more realistic and musical, which will be great for you because you can start expressing yourself more on guitar. Don’t feel like you need to have your chord changes down perfectly to continue with the strumming pattern in this lesson.

In order to play the strumming pattern we have, you’ll need to know how to count sixteenth notes. So far in this lesson series, we’ve been counting out 1, 2, 3, 4, as you can see me play in the video. To move to sixteenth notes, we need to give each beat, or number, four syllables. Instead of counting out 1, 2, 3, 4, we’ll count out 1, e, and, a, 2, e, and, a, 3, e, and, a, 4, e, and, a. You might feel a little silly, but count out loud with me and go through it several times until you are used to it.

Now that you know how to count sixteenth notes, I’ll play the strumming pattern for you in the video and then we’ll break it down into sections. This pattern does include upstrokes so remember that you don’t need to strum through all six strings with your upstroke. You can see in the video that I am only strumming through the top four strings with my upstrokes.

Another tip I want to give you for both your upstrokes and downstrokes is that you don’t need to dig your pick too far into your strings as you strum. You can use just the tip of the pick, otherwise it might be too hard to get through all the strings.

Let’s look closer at the strumming pattern and how it will work. The counting for this pattern is ‘1, 2, and, a’. That means that you’ll have a downstroke on ‘1’ and a downstroke on ‘2’, leaving you with a downstroke on ‘and’ and an upstroke on ‘a’. You can see me play the example of this in the video.

That’s the basic counting pattern for this song. When you get to ‘3, e, and, a, 4, e, and, a’, the pattern will be the same. For this song, we’ll play this pattern through once for each chord.

To fully understand how this strumming technique works, let’s go over the constant strumming technique. The constant strumming technique means you are keeping your arm moving for every count of the sixteenth notes. As you can see in the video, you’ll keep your arm moving up and down through every beat, but you’ll only dig into the strings with your pick on the strumming we talked about. You can follow along and watch me play an example of this in the video.

You can see that my arm was keeping time, but only digging into the strings for the specific strokes needed in this strumming pattern. When you’re learning this strumming pattern, don’t worry about the chords if you don’t want to yet. If you’re having trouble, just mute the strings or stay on one chord as you get the strumming pattern down.

Remember not to lock your wrist because you don’t want to create unnecessary tension. Make sure to keep the honey and feather analogy from lesson seven in mind while you’re strumming.

Once you get this strumming pattern down, you can apply it to every chord in this chord progression. You can watch in the video as I play an example of what the entire progression will sound like.

One trick I have for you when you’re strumming is to hit the upstroke between the G chord and the D chord with all open strings. That gives you an extra moment to change between chords. You can also do the same thing with the upstroke between the D and A minor 7, and same thing between the A minor 7 and C. This trick will be a good stepping-stone as you learn to make your chord transitions smoothly. With time, you’ll want to be able to make those transitions without any hesitation.

The guitar is a popular musical instrument classified as a string instrument with anywhere from 4 to 18 strings, usually having 6. The sound is projected either acoustically or through electrical amplification (for an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, respectively). It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the right hand while fretting (or pressing against the fret) the strings with the left hand. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive fingerpicking technique. The term fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass, and country guitar playing in the US.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was eventually found more suitable, as it was less prone to feedback. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture.

The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.Classical guitars; also known as Spanish guitars are typically strung with nylon strings, plucked with the fingers, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of musical styles including classical music. The classical guitar's wide, flat neck allows the musician to play scales, arpeggios, and certain chord forms more easily and with less adjacent string interference than on other styles of guitar. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, but are associated with a more percussive tone.

In Portugal, the same instrument is often used with steel strings particularly in its role within fado music. The guitar is called viola, or violão in Brazil, where it is often used with an extra seventh string by choro musicians to provide extra bass support.

In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the small requinto to the guitarrón, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. In Colombia, the traditional quartet includes a range of instruments too, from the small bandola (sometimes known as the Deleuze-Guattari, for use when traveling or in confined rooms or spaces), to the slightly larger tiple, to the full sized classical guitar. The requinto also appears in other Latin-American countries as a complementary member of the guitar family, with its smaller size and scale, permitting more projection for the playing of single-lined melodies. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by the Spaniard Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892).All three principal types of resonator guitars were invented by the Slovak-American John Dopyera (1893–1988) for the National and Dobro (Dopyera Brothers) companies. Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with a body that may be made of brass, nickel-silver, or steel as well as wood, the sound of the resonator guitar is produced by one or more aluminum resonator cones mounted in the middle of the top. The physical principle of the guitar is therefore similar to the loudspeaker. The original purpose of the resonator was to produce a very loud sound; this purpose has been largely superseded by electrical amplification, but the resonator guitar is still played because of its distinctive tone. Resonator guitars may have either one or three resonator cones. The method of transmitting sound resonance to the cone is either a "biscuit" bridge, made of a small piece of hardwood at the vertex of the cone (Nationals), or a "spider" bridge, made of metal and mounted around the rim of the (inverted) cone (Dobros). Three-cone resonators always use a specialized metal bridge. The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square cross-section—called "square neck" or "Hawaiian"—is usually played face up, on the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide. The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used, especially in blues.Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies; solid bodies produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. There are two main types of magnetic pickups, single- and double-coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, R & B, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to techniques less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.

The first electric guitarist of note to use a seven-string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps, who was a pioneer of this instrument.[citation needed] Solid body seven-strings were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s in part due to the release of the Ibanez Universe guitar,[citation needed] endorsed by Steve Vai. Other artists go a step further, by using an eight-string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most common seven-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds and Rickenbacker) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard six-string playing. In 1982 Uli Jon Roth developed the "Sky Guitar," with a vastly extended number of frets, which was the first guitar to venture into the upper registers of the violin. Roth's seven-string and 33-fret "Mighty Wing" guitar features a six-octave range.

In this lesson, we’re going to go through how to use your picking hand to properly strum the guitar. This will help you make sure your practice is efficient, reduce the risk of injury, and help your progress through future lessons.

I’m using a pick for the strumming in this video, but you don’t have to use one if you don’t have one or don’t want to use one. You can use your thumb and your index finger instead to strum the strings. I do recommended trying a pick out, but it’s up to you. Some of things covered in this lesson are subjective, like how to grip the pick and the angle to strum at.

The easiest way to hold a pick is to hold it in front of you with the pointed end towards your left side, put your right thumb on it as naturally as you can, and come down on the pick with your index finger, gripping it naturally. Your finger may be curved, it may be parallel to the pick, or it may bend the other way. You can also try gripping the pick with two fingers to give yourself more control. Experiment with your grip and find what is most comfortable for you.

The next subjective thing I’ll talk about it the angle that you pick from. Most guitar players have the pick angled downward towards the floor when they strum, while some people have the pick parallel to the strings, and a few people will have their pick angled upwards. The angle you choose doesn’t matter, as long as you experiment and find what you like best.

Another tip I want to give you when you’re strumming is to relax. If you start to tense up, not only will your playing be inefficient, but you may end up with injuries. If you feel any tension starting in your shoulders while you’re strumming, just stop, relax, and start over again.

Something I see many new guitar players do is lock their wrist and strum from just their elbow, which can be a cause for tension. The best analogy for strumming is to pretend you have a bit of honey on your finger with a feather stuck to it, and you’re trying to flick the feather off. In the video, you’ll see that most of the strumming movement is coming from my wrist but my elbow is moving too. Keep this analogy in mind as you go through this lesson.

We’re going to start our strumming off with some downstrokes, and if you don’t know any chords yet, that’s okay. You can just mute the strings. Hold the pick in your hand with your preferred grip at the angle you prefer, and remember the analogy to use your wrist. Strum downwards through all six strings using downstrokes. Keep trying this over again, and if you need to pause the video, that’s just fine.

Once you’re comfortable with your downstrokes, it’s time to learn upstrokes as well. Remembering all the same tips, strum through the strings using an upstroke. Often newer guitar players think they need to upstroke through all six strings, but that’s not really true. You’ll notice in the video that as I play a G chord, which uses all six strings, I only hit the top three to five strings with my upstroke.

When you’re comfortable with your upstrokes and downstrokes on their own, you’ll want to try putting them together. Try alternating upstrokes and downstrokes, and again, if you don’t know any chords, you can just mute the strings with your other hand.

A lot of newer guitar players have trouble keeping a grip on their pick when they strum, so it goes flying out of their hand. Be sure to experiment with how tightly you hold on to the pick. You need to hold on to it just tight enough so that it won’t go flying, but not so tightly that you end up tensing up.

You’ll need to develop a technique where you’re always adjusting the pick, because the pick will move a bit when you’re constantly strumming. When I play guitar, I keep making micro-adjustments to make sure the pick doesn’t fly out of my hands.

Keep all the tips from this lesson in mind as you keep working through the Beginner Guitar Quick-Start series. For now, practice your downstrokes, upstrokes, and then putting them together. Don’t worry about your fretting hand yet and just focus on your strumming hand.