strumming patterns

Feel free to get outside the box here.
jeffstephan
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Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:31 pm

Dear Neil,

As a Target member I get great enjoyment and value from your lessons. To make a good thing better, I wonder if it would be possible to add the strumming patterns to the PDFs? Many music publications include this and I find this practice very useful. Otherwise a person has to either go by memory or scribble it on the printout.

Food for thought.
Jeff Stephan
P.S. I look forward to adding some details to my profile soon.


BigBear
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 12:38 am

Jeff- many of the tabs in the TARGET program do indeed have the strumming shown underneath the tab. Is that what you're looking for? What they won't show is the timing needed to get the "feel" of the tune. I've never seen any tabs anywhere show this particularly well. I think it is a limitation of the tab system.

Many of us feel that the term "strumming pattern" denotes something that we, as guitarists, don't want ie. for our playing and strumming to fall into a "pattern". We've had that discussion several times on this forum with the concensus always that strumming patterns are only marginally helpful and certainly not worth the effort to learn.

Neil always shows us the correct way to strum a song in his videos with all the up and down strokes, rest strokes, muting etc. But I believe he wants us to interpret that our own way and not rely on specified patterns to get the sound we want. It is an entirely different approach than a "picking pattern" which can be effectively used.

Don't know if that helps except to say "beware of strumming patterns"!

Cheers! :cheer:


AndyT
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:24 am

I've found that strumming patterns are very helpful for a guitar player to learn how to strum. Once you learn it, you will actually advance past it and then they will not be very usefull. But in that beginning time, they help no end.


TGMatt
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:33 am

Use the new strumming practice Aooustic Genius series we just uploaded...Bear nailed the rest on its head


BigBear
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:42 am

I guess it depends on what you call a strumming pattern. If learning the correct up and down strokes is considered a "pattern" then I might agree. But learning a pattern like up-down-down-up-down or something like that doesn't seem very helpful.

Strumming patterns can become a crutch. Notice how few books there are on the subject. In fact, I'd never even heard of a "strumming pattern" until I joined this site! The song drives the strumming. New players trying to keep time with a metronome and then learn a strumming patterns are going to be so mechanical it will drive them nuts. I believe even new players should use a metronome but then get the feel of the song naturally.

But each to his own, right? :cheer:


AndyT
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 2:06 am

Here is a strumming pattern that Neil teaches on the Brown Eyed Girl lesson. D DU UDU. Another way to write it is: 1 2+ +4+. Both are the same thing, but the second one give you the timing as well that fits the time signature of the song. And by adding a couple of other small bit of info, you can add emphasis, Bass notes, Alternating bass, muting, Cut Time, Swing Time, and 16th indicators to it. The system can carry quite a bit of information. Using it, you can learn to strum correctly. Once you have learned about 10 or 15 different patterns like this, something 'clicks' in your head and suddenly it makes sense. Once you hit that point, you can invent strum patterns on the fly. The big trick is to get the count embedded deep into fretting hand muscle memory.


AndyT
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 2:08 am

Some people might learn it in 1 or 2 patterns, some might take 30 or 40. It really doesn't matter. Once you hit that 'Ah HA' moment, you're good to go. Until then, you're mostly lost.


wiley
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 11:12 am



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