Rhythm Guitar Basics 1 (Guitar Lesson BC-136) Guitar for beginners Stage 3

This is Stage 3, Lesson 6 of Justin's Beginner Guitar Course.

This video covers some very basic rhythm guitar skills and gives you a chance to play along and work with the metronome a bit.

The Justinguitar Beginners Guitar Course, a series of over 100 lessons on guitar for beginners. Text support is on the web site and also in a proper old skool paper book which can be ordered from the web site of your local music store :)

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

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Have fun :)

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Hi, how're you doing? It's Justin here,

and today we are going to start looking at
a little bit more strumming, but only a little bit.

So I'm still wanting you to be
very conscious of making sure

that you get your chord changes fast enough
to handle our strumming patterns.

But I do want to introduce the next concept,
which is that of an "and".

Now, we previously mentioned that in a bar,
we have four beats.

So we'd regularly be counting one, two, three and four.

and we also noted that these four were all down strums.

So we were always playing,
If i just pick a G chord it would be

(plays) one, two, three, four.

And you are just doing a down-strum on every beat.

So we call the one, two, three and four,
which are referred to as the beat.

Well, any one of them is the beat.

Yeah? Playing on the beat,
putting a down-strum on the beat.

There's lots of ways of saying that.

Now, if you just watch my strumming hand again
as I'm doing this,

I'm going (plays) one, two, three, four.

And you will notice that in between every one
of those down-strums is an up-strum.

And this is the big secret for rhythm guitar,
if you can say it's a secret.

it's that you have to keep your hand moving evenly
all the time.

So if we want to add something in between those beats,

this is where we introduce a thing called the "and".

So, in normal counting in music, you would have like:

One - AND - two - AND - three - AND - four - AND

The ANDs being exactly half way through,
between the numbers or the beat.

Now, as our hand is moving down on the beat every time,

that means that your hand will be moving up
in between every beat.

So what we are going to introduce now is
adding one up-strum to our regular beat.

and like I said, we're not going really fast

but that's because I want you to go really well,
not really fast.

And I want you to spend a bit of time making sure
you've got this rhythm really solid.

So, I'll pick an E chord just because it's
a bit easier to hold down than the G chord,

in case any of you are struggling with that.

You can play along with this is you'd like.
In fact, that would be quite a good idea.

What we are going to go for now,
I'm going to give you a 3, 4 count-in,

and what we are going to do is
put an AND after three.

So, I'm going to be counting
one, two, three and four.

One, two, three and four.

And you will notice that the one, two, three, and the four
are still really even

and it's just that AND,
that and is exactly half way in between.

And that's where your up-stroke would be.

So your going to be doing, essentially:
down, down, down-up, down.

One, two, three and four.

And you are going to make it really really nice and even.

Let's just have a little go at doing that together now.

And then we are going to stick it to the metronome as well,

and make sure that you can play it correctly
with the metronome.

So here we go, counting you in.

Three, four,
(plays) down, down, down-up, down.

One, two, three and four. Keep going,
one, two, three and four.

And really try and get this evenness happening,
three and four, down, down, down-up, down.

And it just continues, it's really even. It's has got to be;
your hand doesn't stop moving.

Now I just thought of something.
A very common question that beginners have

when they start doing this up-strum is:
"My up-strum kind of sounds funny,

what strings am I supposed to be strumming
with the up-strum?"

Well, you can strum all of the strings with your up-strum,

but it's more normal to just strum, say, the thinnest
three or four strings would be a normal up-strum.

You don't have to strum all of the strings.

It's up to you, but that would be, if you like, a kind of
normal amount of strings to strum on an up-strum.

This is really important.

Now, what we are really going for is noticing
that my hand is moving continuously all the time,

So, we are going to do it again
and I am going to get the metronome out.

And I am going to stick it, here we go,
we're on 60 already. So here is 60bpm.

. . .

really nice and even.

So, this of course, if we were counting along with it,
would be quite simple.

Down, down, down-up, down.

One. two, three and four.

One. two, three and four.

Noticing, of course, that the one, two, three and four
are still exactly on the beat with the metronome.

and the "AND" is just in between.
This is the key here.

So, our down-strum is always going to be with the beat.

It's always going to be with the metronome.

And the up-strum or the AND is going to fall
in between the metronome clicks.

So I'm going to stick the metronome on.
I'm going to play a bit, I want you to play along with me.

It's 60bpm. And then sometimes I'm going to stop

and I'm just going to move my hand for you at the screen.

And I want you to follow along and keep playing
without me having to play.

So, here we go, there's the beat, here we go.

So we're doing an E chord, here we go, three, four,

(plays) one, two, three and four.

One, two, three and four.

That's down, down, down-up, down.

Down, down, down-up, down.

On your own, down, down, down-up, down.

Down, down, down-up, down.

That's one, two, three and four

One, two, three and four.

Keep going, one, two, three and four.

One, two, three and four.

One, two, three and four,
one, two, three and four.

Now, this is what you need to be doing now to practice.

Just putting the metronome on, that was 60bpm.

If you feel really cool with 60bpm,
maybe move it up to 80bpm.

if you feel you're really cool with that,
maybe even 100 or 120.

But the idea here is to make sure that you can consistently strum down with the click

and adding that up-strum after three,
that's really really important that you work on doing that.

Also, not forgetting that you should be able
to tap your foot

with the metronome and the down-strum.
So you've got a few things to think about there:

foot tapping, down-strumming, metronome clicking

and then occasionally
doing an up-strum in between all of that.

It's a little bit challenging but definitely, definitely possible.

So that's the next stage of your strumming development.

At some point you might want to check out my
really useful Strumming Techniques DVD,

which covers this pattern and a whole bunch more patterns,

some of which we are going to cover more
in this beginner's course.

But it's a lot more thorough on that DVD,
being that it only deals with rhythm guitar, and that's all.

Now, you don't have to.
You can explore this yourself

and try putting that up-strum
in all different places as you see fit,

because it is a little about experimentation
and making sure you keep your hand moving.

But if you do really get into strumming
or you find that you are particularly struggling with it,

you might find that DVD helpful too.

So, enjoy this little of new found rhythm groove.

And remember, we are not applying it to songs yet

We're just working on it, trying to get the rhythm right.

We're going to be applying it to songs soon,

but I need to teach you another little trick called
"Forcing the changes".

So, stick with this one. Work on that rhythm
and getting that nice and solid,

and I'll see you for another lesson soon.
Take care, bye-bye.