Simple Strumming For Acoustic Guitar

Simple Strumming For Acoustic Guitar

When you learn to play guitar, you may find it easy to learn a couple of guitar chords for beginners or to learn a simple strumming pattern. The problem usually comes when you try and put everything together with the intention of writing, or playing a famous song. All of a sudden you find that the fingers won’t stay where you placed them and they won’t move to the next chord shape in time or accurately. To top it all off you also have to worry about the right hand movement an any strings you might need to mute or skip. It’s a lot of work undoubtedly.

Let’s be honest, when we play guitar there’s a lot going on and we have to keep all aspects of our playing under control in order to sound good. Because of this it’s best to break things down as much as possible.

The key at this stage is to slow it down as much as possible. This way the brain will have enough time to multitask each motion and movement. Once you can play a simple two chord pattern at a relatively slow tempo, then you can start thinking about bringing up the speed gradually.

What you don’t want to do is overload your brain with too much information all at once. You will benefit more if you learn a couple of chords at the time. It is better to play one strumming pattern as best as you can, than to play a lot of patterns badly.

As an example try this exercise that combines a simple strumming pattern with guitar chords for beginners.

Easy Strumming Pattern

Here the right hand motion should be Down – Down – Down/Up – Down for both bars. The tricky part comes when you have change chord. However here’s a tip you might find useful.

The third finger (ring finger) of your left hand stays on the B string for both chords, in fact you only have to move the third finger one fret back to play the A chord. So there’s really no need to lift that finger at all, rather use it as an ‘anchor’ for your left hand. This way when it’s time to change chord you have less fingers to move and an anchor to help you do it faster.

Because the third finger only goes back one fret, you don’t really have to lift it at all. This is often a bad habit that a lot of players have. Whenever you play you should aim to make things as easy as possible for you.

This article was written by Marlon Tarditi. Find out more about him by visiting www.marlonthegreat.com