Ok, I'm not a salesman or one to usually try to persuade people towards a certain product one way or another, but there is a tool out that would be very beneficial to us learning on this path together. This tool is called TuxGuitar. Some of you may have heard of GuitarPro, or even TuxGuitar; but whether you have or not, they both are tab input/reading software that plays back what is put in to the program. I highly recommend you go download this program here.
Before we jump into the lesson, let's talk about how this program will help us.
NOTE: Before going any further, I can guarantee that this program is virus-free and will not damage your computer in any way. I currently have this program on all of my computers and use it all of the time.
I believe this program will help us because I will be able to load the files of the tabs demonstrating each exercise that we will be using in each lesson. You will be able to both see the tabs and hear the exercises that are presented in each lesson which will be beneficial to know if you are playing the exercise correctly. And the best thing about this program: IT'S FREE!!!! I love me some freeware. If you don't want to d/l the program you will not be left out in the cold in any way, but I would highly suggest picking up this tool to further your development.
With all that being said, ready for a lesson?
So far we've learned how to fret chords and a few basic rhythms to go along with it and if you've noticed by now, you might have already picked up on what I am going to be teaching about in this lesson. "So Mike, should I, like, not read this lesson dude?" Of course you should!
What we are going to be focusing on today is strumming hand directions. Luckily, there are only two directions to go so this lesson won't be too hard. Almost instinctively, when people pick up a guitar and learn their first chord, the first way they learn to play is by using downstrokes. The other way to play, if there are only two and we've already mentioned downstrokes would be? Well upstrokes of course. I don't know why it's instinctive to play downstrokes first, but that's the way it is.
When you are using the downstroke, that means that you are starting at the large E string and picking accross the strings down towards the floor. The opposite being an upstroke where you start at the little E string and pick up towards the ceiling. When both are incorporated into your right hand movements, we call this strumming. Simple enough, right? Yeh...it pretty much is. With that being said, let's look at how we would notate this.
Once again, I disagree with the way something is done in the guitar/music world and I think that it is unneccisarily confusing, so we are going to make up our own system to use. Our system will be easy to use and understand, just don't expect it to be used anywhere outside of this site. Here is the legend for our system:
Downstroke - v
Upstroke - ^
I don't think it needs much explination.
This can also be applied to individual strings and when done so is called alternate picking. Let's jump on some exercises.
Exercise 1
v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^
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-----5----7----5----4---5----4----2---0---2---0-----
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Be sure to crack out the metronome and practice in time, and I would suggest setting the tempo to about 75-85 starting on quarter-notes then to eigth-notes. Once you become comfortable with playing the exercise at your starter tempo, begin to increase the tempo by 5 bpm until you get to where you can't keep up anymore. Don't expect to get up to 180 bpm and start just shredding through the exercise, it's going to take some time and dedicated practice to really get the technique down. Focus on making your down-strokes and up-strokes equal in force and tone to achieve the most out of this technique.
Let's keep things interesting by getting a few more exercises to work with.
Exercise 2
v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v
------------------------------------------- --1--2--3--4--5--4--3--2--1--------------
------------------------------------------- --------------------------------4--3--2--1--
------------------------------------------- (etc.) --------------------------------------------- (etc.)
------------------------------1--2--3--4-- ---------------------------------------------
-----------------1--2--3--4--------------- ---------------------------------------------
---1--2--3--4----------------------------- --------------------------------------------
With this exercise you will want to go through all the strings and when you get to the top string do the turnaround and then you will notice that you are using the up-stroke on the first beat instead of a down-stroke. Also do this exercise with a metronome going from quarter-notes (QN hereafter) to eigth-notes (EN hereafter.)
The last exercise I'm going to leave you with is to do alternate picking using the G-Major scale which can be found on the resources page if you need a refresher.
Thanks for reading.
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