Encore Acoustic Guitar Lessons: Lesson 6 - Strumming

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Summary: Strumming

We will now learn how to strum! This is a particularly important skill to learn properly, as this will make all those chords you have learnt sound like an actual song!

Technique: How to Strum

The most important thing we will develop is a constant movement with your right (strumming) hand. This is your metronome and needs to always be moving! We do that by learning with rhythm patterns, as shown below. Start by taking the simple "air strumming" pattern, which is all grey arrows. Remember to count through the bar "one and two and three and four and", as shown in the video.

Now, let's add in the red arrows for the rhythm pattern we will be learning. The red arrows are when you actually hit the guitar. The rhythm pattern looks like this:

Interactive Tab: The Full Exercise

Click on the link below to see the full exercise in tab. Remember, our tab player allows you to actually play along with the tab and slow it down if you need, so get your guitars at the ready!

Ready to move on? Remember to check out every lesson in this unit first – then try the next unit...

Lesson 7 - What's Next?

Congratulations for getting this far! You have now learnt some of the most important concepts you will need to take your playing to the next level. In this lesson we'll talk about the next steps and the courses we recommend.