Learn To Play Guitar: Strumming 101 Part 4

An understanding and application of sixteenth note strumming patterns in 4/4 time. Part 4 of 6. Videos here are in parts - for free downloads of the full, uncut, high quality videos, go to http://www.ivideosongs.com/search/tutorials.aspx

Steve Rieck: So this fourth exercise deals with 16th notes and that can be a little bit intimidating if strumming is new to you, but really what 16th notes are, are twice as fast as 8th notes. So just like we took the quarter notes and made them twice as fast with 8th notes, we are going to take the 8th notes and make them twice as fast with 16th notes. So if we do this with a relatively slow tempo, that's really not that much more difficult. Again, the secret here is going to be relaxing the right arm when we play. So if I just strum 16th notes just on the D chord, what I am going to do is strum the four strums per beat. So if I am going 1, 2, 3, 4, we go, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. As you can see again I am just alternating the strum down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up the whole way. We are actually going to use syllables for that. Most musicians use the syllables to refer to specific 16th notes within the B. So on the first strum, we will call that 1, the very first strum, the next up strum, we will say its E as a syllable. Next down strum is going to be and, and the next up strum would be a. The idea behind that is those syllables are easy, they just kind of roll off the tone. So you can say, 1 E and a, 2 E and a, 3 E and a, 4 E and a, 1 E and a, 2 E and a, 3 E and a, 4 E and a. With that exercise, I think it is a good idea to really try to accent the down beats, meaning the 1, the 2, the 3 and the 4 of that. So we have got 1 E and a, 2 E and a, 3 E and a, 4 E and a... So if I applied that straight 16th note pattern to the three chords, the D, the C add9 and the G, it will sound like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, just like that. Now, of course, just like we did with 8th notes, if we allow the pick to miss certain strums, we will get some more interesting sounding rhythms than just the basic 16th notes going the whole time. Rather than giving you specific ones to that I would like you to experiment with this. Once you feel comfortable with the basic 16th note strumming, try to really just let your pick lift off the strings in certain places and it will sound somewhat like this... That's 16th note strumming pattern. So let's take a look at some 6-8 in the next clip. John Oates: Hey! This is John Oates and I am going to do a song called 'She's Gone'. It's A major, C# minor, F# minor, B major.