Strumming Techniques for Electric Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Tom. This is for Expertvillage.com. These are shortcuts to playing the electric guitar. Four bar chords is all you need for rock and roll. And I'm looking at a different strumming method in this particular segment. So, one of the reasons we--actually, I just want to explain why we play so few notes. Like, when I'm playing this chord, you'll notice a lot of songs today use a little bit of distortion. And we'll talk a little bit more about guitar effects along the way. But if I've got some distortion on the guitar, it's a lot more noise. Now obviously if I'm going from chord to chord, it can sound really noisy. So, by resting the fleshy part of my hand there, you get more definition between notes, and that's really what you're looking for on some songs, is try to make sure there's distinction between the chords, a little bit of definition, so people can hear you going from chord to chord. You can also do almost like power chords--that's another strumming technique. So what I'll do is if I've got, say, on a particular bar, four beats to a bar, I may just play the first through the first two beats, and let it ring. And again you notice I'm getting some definition. The way I'm doing that is I'm playing the bar, and I'm letting my fingers come off the string, okay, so that deadens it. So I get that distinct change. And that's just by lifting your hand slightly off the string. Your still in the same position, but it allows me to deaden it all out. Okay, so that's just another technique for strumming when you're playing rhythm guitar for rock and roll."