Quote:
Originally Posted by Deliberate1
As someone with but two years of playing under my belt, I am interested to know what the definition of "strumming" is. Or more specifically, what are the boundaries of the term.
I got my first guitar after penning a couple songs that I wanted to perform. They reflected a simple I-IV-V progression. And I "strummed" open chords, essentially to keep me on the right musical path and moving forward. But as time passed, and I became more familiar with the guitar, and the songs, I began to incorporate picked individual notes or some arpeggios, either as fillers between vocal phrases, or even to parallel or present a melodic counterpoint to the sung word.
So would the definition of "strumming" as it is commonly used, and in this thread, include both the voicing of chords in a rhythmic fashion as well as the melodic sounding of individual notes.
Thanks for schooling me.
David
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This is going to sound academic, and frankly to many readers, as "yeah, everyone knows this!" But here goes anyway:
I would define strumming as sounding of more than one note at the same time with a single picking motion. Yes I know that's not
strictly speaking possible -- while finger pickers can choose to sound several notes at once with multiple digits, a strum only gives the illusion of "at the same time" via very short intervals between notes and the guitar sustain envelope allowing them all maintain volume throughout the strum.
And more loosely, we generally think of sounding a bass note and then strumming (as in the boom-chick style) as strumming too. The bass note is ornament, the strum the majority of the sound. Elaborate versions of some techniques allow one to be heard as strumming as well as arpeggiated picking at the same time--so when folks first heard some Chet Akins recordings they thought it was two guitarists.
Now of course one is free to move notes around while strumming, and some more advanced harmonic styles, more or less every beat introduces a new note in the notes strummed. And also, there can be variations based on the order the strings are strummed (down, up patterns) which add variety and point out that the simultaneousness of the notes sounding is not strictly so.
This is an alternative to arpeggiated playing articulated with finger-picking or movement of a single pick. In that playing style notes tend to be played monophonically (finger pickers can sound multiple notes at once, like a piano player playing block chords, but they most often don't) -- though again, the guitar's sustain envelope can make the notes run across each other as one note or another is still ringing as a new one is struck.
Yes, there's a grey area too. A slow strumming motion, letting each note sound and decay considerably before the next one is arrived at is not likely "heard" as a strum, even if the motion of the picking hand is the same thing in slow motion. And while cross-pickers and finger pickers don't usually sound multiple notes at once (or so nearly at once that we hear them that way), they do avail themselves of that option and we don't always hear two note dyads as strums.