Stop 3 of 6
Eighth notes and up-strums
The strumming-hand pendulum and the most useful strumming pattern.
Loading…
Stop 3 of 6
The strumming-hand pendulum and the most useful strumming pattern.
Until now your strumming hand only went down. At this stop it learns to go up as well, and that back-and-forth motion opens the door to almost every accompaniment in popular music. The key isn't strength or speed but a very simple secret: the hand never stops, like a pendulum. By the end you'll play the most useful strumming pattern there is while changing chords.
Watch a pendulum: down, up, down, up, always at the same rate and never stopping. Your strumming hand (the right one if you're right-handed) is going to work the same way. Listen to this continuous strum, with a stroke on every eighth note:
The golden rule is this: on every number the hand goes down; on every "&" it goes up. The "1" is always a downstroke; the "&" after it, an upstroke. That fixed link between movement and beat is what makes strumming sound solid.
Each upward stroke is an . By splitting every beat in two you're working with eighth-note : the first level of rhythmic precision.
Before playing, count. Say "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &" out loud at a steady tempo, tapping your foot only on the numbers. Your foot goes down on the number and up on the "&": your foot is already a pendulum.
The numbers fall on the and the "&"s on the : right between two beats, when your foot is up. This difference between what lands "on the foot" and what lands "between feet" is the basis of everything that follows.
When you count "1 & 2 &", the span you're watching is half as long as when you count just "1, 2". Small errors show up sooner and get fixed sooner. That's why musicians subdivide mentally even when playing long notes: the "&" works as a halfway checkpoint. At very slow tempos (below 60 BPM) subdividing is almost compulsory, because the gap between beats is too big to feel without help.
The upstroke is not a downstroke in reverse. It has its own character:
Compare these two patterns. In the first there are only downstrokes on the numbers; in the second, upstrokes join in, filling the space with a finer shimmer:
Down only
Down and up
From the wrist
From the elbow
In practice the arm joins in a little, but the engine is the wrist. Imagine the pick as an extension of your arm that "brushes" the strings rather than hitting them.
Here's the secret. In strumming patterns you don't hit on every eighth, but the hand moves on every one. When it shouldn't sound, the hand makes the same movement passing over (or outside) the strings without touching them: that's a .
Why not stop the hand when it isn't hitting? Because if you stop it, you have to work out when to start again, and that calculation always comes a little late or a little early. With the hand moving, the next stroke falls into place by itself: the pendulum was already heading there.
Listen to this pattern: down on every number, ghost on every "&". It sounds just like the quarter notes from earlier stops, but now the hand rises without hitting between strokes:
This is probably the most used in pop, acoustic rock and folk. It's written like this, one character per eighth note:
| 1 | & | 2 | & | 3 | & | 4 | & |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ↓ | · | ↓ | ↑ | · | ↑ | ↓ | ↑ |
We'll build it in three steps. Don't move on until the previous one comes out without thinking.
Step 1 of 3 · Step 1: down on the numbers
Only the downstrokes on the four beats, with the hand rising without hitting on each "&". It's the "↓ · ↓ · ↓ · ↓ ·" pattern you already know.
Step 3 is the hardest because beat 3 —a medium-strong beat— is left "empty". That absence is exactly what gives the pattern its lilt. Written in note values, the upstroke on the "&" of 2 is held over beat 3 with a :
Once the pattern runs by itself, the challenge is to change chords without your strumming hand stopping. Guitarists' trick: the last upstroke of the bar (the "&" of 4) is played with the fretting hand already on its way to the next chord. That stroke sounds with some open strings, and that's fine: almost nobody notices it, whereas everybody notices a strum that stops.
Turn on the metronome and strum continuous eighths on Em, counting "1 & 2 &" out loud. Every 30 seconds, alternate: one bar hitting everything and one bar hitting only the downstrokes (the upstrokes become ghosts). The hand must never change speed.
Goal: Two minutes of continuous eighths (↓↑) on Em without stopping your hand, at 80 BPM.
Play along with this backing, which uses exactly this pattern. Start at 60 BPM with the click on. Change on beat 1 and use the last upstroke of the bar to move your fretting hand.
Goal: Play the whole progression twice in a row with the pattern, without stopping, at 80 BPM.
Practice blocks ticked: 0 · Self-assessments taken: 0