Strumming

Posted on August 2, 2007
Filed Under Technique |

Do you have to have a special right hand technique? In strumming the guitar, I mean. I’m using a book as a starting point for learning guitar and it teaches you how to strum the guitar when you are playing a chord and then go to just plucking (well, not plucking, but I don’t know the correct word to explain) one string, like you have to in a song. I can’t seem to get it right and I don’t know whether I’m thinking about it too much or not. Also, can you explain to me how you use a pick for this? Because I don’t know how I would strum different things smoothly and stop the vibrations right… I hope you can understand what I’m trying to ask you because it’s a major problem for me though it’s probably a pretty silly problem.

- Jessica

Jessica,

Thanks for your question. I think I understand what you are asking. Basically: “What the heck am I supposed to do with a pick?”

There are a number to important right hand techniques and strumming is a good place to begin. Let’s begin with the pick. Here are a couple of paragraphs from my book:

Playing with a Pick

“If you want to impress your friends refer to your guitar pick as a plectrum. It comes from a Greek word, which means, “to strike.” Early plectrums were made of tortoise shell or bone. Today picks are made of everything from metal to polished stone, but the vast majority are made of plastic. They come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and thicknesses, all designed to do the same thing - set the strings in motion. Buy several different kinds of picks and see what works best for you.

Think of a pick as an extension of your fingernails (thumb and index finger). Don’t hold it so that a lot of the surface area is exposed, this can be unwieldy and difficult to control. Don’t hold it too tightly. Hanging on with a “death grip,” will fatigue the muscles in your forearm and you will be too tense to play smoothly. When holding a pick with the correct amount of pressure a person could pull it away from you fairly easily. But don’t hold it too loosely or, you’ll need to develop an effective method for removing the pick from inside your guitar!”
- Foundation for Great Guitar Playing

Once you are holding the pick properly the next thing to do is get your right hand moving properly. To do this it’s important to have a basic understanding of rhythm and tempo. Rhythm is the heartbeat of a song. Tempo is the heart rate (the speed of the heartbeat). Music is built to repeating time cycles - what we call beats. Most music uses cycles of 3 beats or 4 beats.

Try this. Listen to a piece of music you like and start tapping your foot to the beat. As you do this try counting 1, 2, 3, 4 and see if that fits the music. If it doesn’t try 1, 2, 3 and that should. You will notice there are two parts to your foot movement - up and down. We call the downward movement the down beat and the upward movement the upbeat. When you strum your hand should be going up and down in the same way. (Thankfully it’s easier to hold a pick with your fingers than it would be with your toes.) The key to strumming is to keep your hand going up and down with the beat.

When you are first learning you may want to strum the strings every time the pick goes by (down beat and
upbeat). As you get comfortable with keeping your hand in motion you will find that you can come up with interesting strums by not striking the strings every time the pick passes. Important: be sure to keep you hand in motion even when you don’t touch the strings. As you do that you will find your strum smoothing out.

A quick side note: when you strum, be sure to angle the pick slightly depending on the direction of the strum. On a down strum the small end of the pick should be angled up. On an up strum the small end should be angled down. In other words the part of the pick that strikes the string should be slightly trailing.

A brief word about picking individual notes: Once you are comfortable strumming all the strings you will find that you can come up with even more interesting sounds by picking individual notes. When you pick a note you can go either up or down. These are called up strokes or down strokes. When first learning to use a pick it’s a good idea to alternate up and down strokes on the same string. That will help develop evenness in your picking style. By the way, don’t worry about stopping the vibration of the strings. They stop soon enough without or help. When you are first learning getting the string in motion is the first thing to worry about. Muting comes later.

There are tons of things that could be said about strumming and picking but hopefully this will get you off to a good start.

Happy strumming,
John

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