Day 13

Guitar and Uke: Strumming Down (Bassists: skip ahead)

Make this Chord:
|-3---
|-0---
|-0---
|-0---
|-2---
|-3---

|-2---
|-3---
|-2---
|-0---

(Barritone: Use the uke chords. I know your tuning's different. It doesn't matter.)

Imagine a beat.
Hear it in your head, play it on a metronome, whatever, just get the counting going somehow. Snap it out, tap it on your guitar, tap your foot, whatever.
Count to four.

Then do it again.

Then do it again.

Now, on each of those beats, strum all of your strings. Down strum for each beat.

I'm going to notate that as

D D D D | D D D D |
D means down.

Practice that. One down strum on each beat.

Now shake it up. Strum

D D _ D | D D _ D |
Strum down on beat 1
Strum down on beat 2
Move your hand down like you're strumming on beat 3, but don't touch the strings.
Strum down on beat 4

The basics of guitar strumming is that your hand goes down on the beat and up on the off-beat (eigth note). The thing that no one makes super clear is that your hand goes down on the down beat, even if you don't play on that beat.

Practice that. Go faster. Make up your own patterns of down and off. Play as fast as you can while still keeping the beat.
Tomorrow we'll go up, too.

**Bassists: **
|------------------
|--------5---------
|---2--5---5--2----
|-3-------------3--
Play this a couple times. Play as slowly as you need to to make it perfect. Then increase your speed until you can no longer be perfect.

Remember the shape that these notes make on the fretboard. It'll probably be relevant later sometime in your musical life.