I am having trouble strumming!

Jools · #1 January 10th, 2005

Hi peeps, just learning the acoustic right now, my girlfriend plays really well as do my friends and I am getting to reconise the chords etc, but I am really bad at strumming, down and upstrokes are terrible. It feels as though my hands are too clumsy and I keep hitting every string really loudly. It sounds terrible. Plus, I am having trouble with rhythm.

I am enjoying myself but this is hard isn't it!! Just wanted to see if any of you guys have experienced this, great website Kirk, thanks!!

Brad E · #2 January 12th, 2005

dude I know I am kinda struggling with strumming patterns too. Or atleast in listening to it by ear it and trying to play it in a song I got off the net. It's frustrating, I know the chords to play but I'm not strumming right!

Kirk Lorange · #3 January 12th, 2005

Hey Jools ...

Hang in there. Stick at it and it will come. Strumming is not a natural action, it's something that must be practiced for quite a while before you get comfortable. Try not to think too much about the physics of it, concentrate more on the sounds you're creating. And Relax ... good strumming comes from relaxed shoulders, arms and wrists.

Spyder F16 · #4 January 13th, 2005

For a good number of people, as kirk said, its not natural to do. (Actually any playing of guitar for the matter). Try to play guitar doing strumming motions as often as possible (even when lacking guitar, use airguitar!), then the motions shall be more 'natural'. I know that before I started to actually play a real guitar, I played air guitar, pretending to strum. (Yep, I had the tennis racket thing goin...). This bit of 'fun' was what I believed let me be able to strum a guitar as soon as I took it up.

I still catch myself doing airguitar from time to time, with looks as a result :roll:

matt · #5 January 18th, 2005

Another piece of advice is to start out with a large, yet really thin pick when you first begin strumming because they're much more forgiving when you're not coordinated.

When I first started strumming on the guitar, I had a small Jazz Dunlop 3 pick which made it much more difficult than it had to be. (hindsight's always 20-20)

The key is to control your strumming wrists movement so that it's consistent. Just let the pick brush over the tops of all the strings with a nice, gentle up and down and a fairly stiff grasp of the pick between your thumb and index finger.

If I'm playing along with a song that has a nice rhythm, I actually start tapping my foot and moving side to side. I find that when I get into it, I get to the point where I'm not even thinking about the strumming, it just becomes natural after a while.

When you get comfortable with strumming and have a feel for rhythm (which is super important), move onto fingerstyle and your playing will start to sound much more interesting (this applies more to acoustic than electric)