[kaneashiru1]

I've a problem guys.. I've been learning the guitar for a few months now... I play a mean lead, ie. I can do hammer-on's, pull-off's, tremolo, sliding techniques and some double tapping on my crappy steel stringed acoustic... An I can even get it up to about 120bpm....

My problem's quite simple, but"mind-boggling" as my friend put it... I can play good lead.. But I've very little skills when it comes to strumming techniques... Any tips anyone? I've got the finger transitions down but the strumming technique's really shaky, I play with a pick btw in case you're wondering.. So any tips guys?

[Stratrat]

Originally Posted by kaneashiru1

...I've notice something about you stratstrat... You seem to harboring some ire for people whoo like shredding... Hmmmm....

Eddie Van Halen is one of my all-time absolute favorite guitarists, so I definitely wouldn't say that. Brad Paisley is another one of my favorites - if you've never seen him play (click the link), he's basically a "country shredder" who can keep up with anybody in the "wheedlywheedly" crowd, and smoke most of them. However, the reason I have such enormous respect for both of them is that they're both also very solid rhythm guitarists, and are both very versatile.

My whole point is that shredding is a great way to impress your friends (if they're impressed by somebody who can play scales at 240 bpm)....but if that's all you can do, it's pretty limiting when it comes time to jam with other people. If it's jam sessions with other guitarists, usually people take turns swapping off between rhythm and leads. If you can't hold down the beat when it's somebody else's turn to step forward, you probably won't be invited back. Same goes if you want to hook up with a drummer and/or bass player to jam....they're most likely going to want to play actual songs (be it originals or covers), not just provide the background for someone to play endless high-speed scalar runs over them. Rhythm guitar is a big part of most music, and unless one's only ambition in life is to be "THE" hotshot lead guitar player in a two or three-guitar band, one would be well-served by learning how to play rhythm guitar too.

[Noodler]

I pressed my teacher to show me more about how he strums and he decided to do it. I learned a lot.

One of the main things was that acoustic and electric guitar are different beasts, at that level anyway. So he's shown me that what works for me on electric guitar won't necessarily work on an acoustic. The reason is that an acoustic guitar is a percussive instrument. So when hitting say beats 2 and 4, to get the sounds that I like, I need to to really hit those babies. It's still very controlled, but it's boom- WHACK- boom-boom-WHACK, with the whacks being probably more percussive than actually playing the chords. I'm not talking muted strums exactly, but slapping the strings against the guitar and palm muting (it's tricky). It's much more athletic than he makes it look! So it's making the guitar play what a snare drum would play.

It's the difference between doing the alternating bass thing and it sounding like a generic country song, vs. someone going, "Hey, that's Johnny Cash!" and singing along with you.

I was reaching a point where I thought I just didn't have enough talent to go any further (I've been playing a while), but now it's like I'm at the beginning again and I have to learn to strum an acoustic guitar as it's own separate skill. Hard, soft, using only some strings then others, mixing it all up while keeping that constant steady beat going. It's a real challenge! Got some real work to do.

[LeeB]

Time of Your life is DDU UDU in case anyone was wondering .. a very good pattern to learn by the way... often referred to as the folk strum

[kaneashiru1]

I finally learned how to strum! Without a pick though.. So since I've the timing right, I'm practicing with one now...

I dunno If I'm hitting it right without a pick but it sounds right though, I'm hitting it with my thumbnail on the upstrum and my pinky to my middle fingers nails for the down strum..

It's pick time... For the nice wheedly action as strat2 put it.. I found some guys who're pretty good but their wheedly-ing sound pretty good, just look for cannon rock final at youtube, and dragonforce.. ^_^

[Noodler]

Originally Posted by LeeB

Time of Your life is DDU UDU in case anyone was wondering .. a very good pattern to learn by the way... often referred to as the folk strum

Interesting. I didn't know it was called anything before.

I think the point stratrat and I were making is still valid. You've given the strumming pattern which is great! However the accents are on 1 - 2 and, which you'd have to notate too, since it differs from the usual 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. I like how you left a space to show that the 3 is actually missing from that pattern. I think to notate something like that, you'd need 3 lines: one for the beat, another for srtumming and another for accents (or at least one of the others highlighted such). It "breaks" some pretty cardinal rules! Can you notate with the 3 lines for me?

If you gave me a strumming pattern written down in 16th notes with odd strums missing (especially things like the 3rd beat or and in 1-a-x-a), I'd have to count it out really slowly, till I got it, then slowly speed it up. But if you just played it, I could probably copy you straight away.

kaneashiru1, can you actually shred like Dragonforce?

[kaneashiru1]

I'm hoping to be able to, So far there're some parts of their riffs that I can actually copy, and some that i can't... i can do some of the tremolo tricks they have, and a bit of double tapping...

I spent the first month of learning the guitar learning the tricks like sliding, tremolo, legato, pull-on's, and pull-off's... It hurt a lot but it's paying off right now... I used to be like lookit I can do legato stuff... Then someone would say wheee, play a song.. Then I'd be like I dunno songs yet...

Yeah, do know where I can get the other scales? So far I've the major scale partially memorized, along with the pentatonic scale....

I'm still in the learning my guitar stage!! :


Holding chords for very long hurts my fingers so I prefer sliding and doing stuff with my left hand, blame the arcade for the extra dexterity...

learning to strum with a pick is hell, especially the accenting part...

Stumming... The final frontier...