Important Strumming Patterns – Lesson 19
- Thread starter SynGates.com
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Honestly, the palm mute coming from open strumming is killing me right now. My guitar teacher wants me to learn it as well, and I find it a lot harder than any technique I learned up to this point. I can palm mute tight power chords just fine, but doing a white open strumming pattern and incorporating palm muting into that... uff
I reached back to the Beatles, The Eagles, Boston, and a lot of older rock and pop to practice strumming with real bits of music rather than repeating exercises. That taught me how to strum much quicker. Cheers folks
Great idea! It's always better to practice an actual song. If you know what it's supposed to sound like - that gives you a huge head-start.
Make sure your holding the pick properly, and experiment with ways you can mute the guitar without and pause or with a very small pause that's barely noticeable while you switch chords
Practice with a metroknome so you can slow down enough to nail it, don't be afraid to play at 80bpm or slower. Once you find a comfortable tempo go up 5 bpm at a time to slowly work yourself up to the speed you desire. You'll nail it in no time, I wish you luck!I can't mute the 2nd and 4th for the life of me! HELP!!!!
J
Jak Angelescu
Guest
I'm actually revisiting these beginner lessons and that muting the "2 and 4" is a lot harder than it seems, and I considered myself a decent rhythm guitarist! I'm having trouble not scraping the top of my picking hand index finger on the strings when I mute the 2 and 4 with my right hand as well. Anyone else have this issue or know what causes it?
I'm also having this problem with the 2nd and 4th and I felt very upset, 'cause it seemed like something very simple and easy, but it's not.
Same thing about scraping the finger. I tried holding the pick different ways, to see if the problem was solved, and the best one was to hold the pick with the tips of my fingers, but then I lost some precision and control of my strumming.
J
Jak Angelescu
Guest
I am glad to hear I am not the only one! I'm getting a little bit more used to muting but the scraping on my index finger is killing me lol! I also have tried many different ways and I just can't seem to find anything
Scraping the index finger. Hmmm. You're doing something not-right here.
The idea here is that you're sort of maintaining the tick-tock pattern of consistent up and down strokes. Since it's one and two and, all of your upstrokes are on "and" and all the downstrokes are on a number. So when you get to "2," that should be your second downstroke.
Now, in execution, you're still doing the downstroke. The difference is that at the end of that downstroke, you put the palm (the fleshy part of your pinky-edge of the hand) down on the strings to mute them, "Rhythmically." Picture just doing a downstroked power chord where you DON'T want it to ring out majestically through the stadium - you want a super-quick "strum MUTE" to happen.
Maybe that makes a little more sense?
The idea here is that you're sort of maintaining the tick-tock pattern of consistent up and down strokes. Since it's one and two and, all of your upstrokes are on "and" and all the downstrokes are on a number. So when you get to "2," that should be your second downstroke.
Now, in execution, you're still doing the downstroke. The difference is that at the end of that downstroke, you put the palm (the fleshy part of your pinky-edge of the hand) down on the strings to mute them, "Rhythmically." Picture just doing a downstroked power chord where you DON'T want it to ring out majestically through the stadium - you want a super-quick "strum MUTE" to happen.
Maybe that makes a little more sense?
I noticed, I actually have a similar/the same problem. I think, the issue is that I'm holding the pick pretty much as Papa Gates suggests in the beginner lesson, and use only the very top of the pick to, well, pick/strum/whatever. Because of this, and due to the angle of my index finger during a strum, it is super easy to get a little bit to exited during strums and scrape the top of the index finger over the strings, in particular the bit below the nails.
Its an issue with the energetic strums, like these strum-mutes. Actually just talking about it made me more conscious about the issue, and the solution for me is clear, just leave more pick outside for strums like these (and control the motion a bit more)
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