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Old 01-10-2020, 04:03 AM
diego diego is offline
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Default Improve strumming

I've been playing for decades and it's not that I cannot strum in rhythm, and do some syncopations here and there... but what would be your first choice to look into if someone wants to add more rhythmic feel to playing? I can do some more complicated strumming patterns only if I learn it by heart - by mimicking, but I would like to do it spontaneously, for every song or cover that I play. I think I lack in the drumming department - I never played the drums, and I came to realize that one should approach acoustic guitar patterns like drumming. Where to start, in order for strumming to be generally more interesting and "groovy"?
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Old 01-10-2020, 04:13 AM
Silly Moustache Silly Moustache is online now
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I wonder if these might help :



and

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Old 01-10-2020, 04:21 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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I don't think drumming is the answer, necessarily. I have played drums a little myself, but I'm not too good. Waving sticks around is quite a different technique from waving your arm around when strumming. My guitar rhythm is pretty good, my drum rhythm not so much.

You basically just have to get into the groove. I know that sounds obvious, and too vague to be of any use, but put on some music and dance to it. Start to feel it by actually moving your body to it. You can do this even just sitting in a chair, because it's your arm movements that matter, but standing is better. Relax your shoulders, hang loose. Get into the groove, and get the groove into you.

Find a one-chord backing track, at an easy medium tempo. I.e., you want nothing that requires too much thinking about the fret hand. Start just keeping the beat, and gradually try and add syncopations, or specific patterns. Make a clear distinction between a straight feel and a swing feel. (You obviously need two different BT's for that.) And if you want to get into funk, there's a more subtle distinction between straight 16ths and swing 16ths.

In all these cases, you need to spend more time on each exercise than you may think. You have to get to the point where you really are just grooving and having a good time, and hardly thinking about what you're playing. If one single chord gets really boring (or too painful on that fret hand!) use (or make) a BT with two alternating chords - one or two bars each.
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Old 01-11-2020, 11:57 AM
mattbn73 mattbn73 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by diego View Post
I've been playing for decades and it's not that I cannot strum in rhythm, and do some syncopations here and there... but what would be your first choice to look into if someone wants to add more rhythmic feel to playing? I can do some more complicated strumming patterns only if I learn it by heart - by mimicking, but I would like to do it spontaneously, for every song or cover that I play. I think I lack in the drumming department - I never played the drums, and I came to realize that one should approach acoustic guitar patterns like drumming. Where to start, in order for strumming to be generally more interesting and "groovy"?
So much of the emphasis in online instruction around rhythm and strumming seems to be from a kind of "additive" understanding - like you're starting with nothing and only adding in the strums that you want to hear. Forever always heard more from a kind of "subtractive" viewpoint.

I personally believe that's where all of the groove is. Can you strum steady eighth notes in 4/4 time convincingly over anything, all down strokes? Can you do the same with alternating down and up strokes? Can you do the same alternating down up 16th notes?

If you can do the above convincingly, then you can start to accent groupings of 3, which is where syncopation comes from. You can start to "leave out" strums from the structure, which is what great musicians are really doing... It's mentally a process about what " to leave out" more than what you add.

Most players who feel they have "bad rhythm" probably have some degree of poor technique - strumming - in the first place. If you can't convincingly strum all sixteenths and sound decent, technique is the problem, not the face that you're playing something on every subdivision in the first place.
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