How to Strum a Guitar

Series Summary

The guitar has been around for nearly 5,000 years, developed from even more ancient instruments akin to the sitar, and it has been inspiring audiences since its first chord was strummed. It is the primary instrument involved with many genres of music including country, blues, flamenco, rock and pop, and has been celebrated as one of the most expressive instruments in the world. Whether blending acoustic harmonies on a classical guitar or shredding solos on an electric guitar, the importance of the guitar to 20th century music cannot be ignored. Interested in learning how to play guitar? In this free music lesson video, an experienced musician and guitar instructor demonstrates the basics of playing guitar. Tune a guitar with a tuner or by ear, and learn to strum a guitar like a pro with help from this instructor. Learn to play the blues and rock music on guitar, and get tips on using a capo and playing barre chords.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Derek Tarnow. I've been playing guitar for about twelve years, and I teach and play locally. Right now, I'm going to teach you about strumming the guitar. Strumming is a very important technique to have a good grasp on when you're playing the guitar, because you use it for so many things. Like if you're playing like a funky like octave thing like, or if you're strumming chords, you know, this is all strumming. Anyway, as it is with all the guitar techniques, it's best to start simple, so let's start with just choosing a rhythm, and let's say eighth notes, and we'll just start playing it on a single string, so... And if you notice, as I'm playing the eighth notes, I'm using both a down and an up stroke. This is very important strumming, because if you just play all down strokes you're not going to be able to get very many interesting rhythms later on. But the next step is to take that one note and play as octave, so let's try that with eighth notes. So, the next step after that is to strum a full chord; let's say an E chord. So we're still going to stick with the eighth notes though. And if you notice, as I'm playing, there's not very much arm motion. That's also very important. You want to have all of your motion to come from your wrist, and that that's one of the most difficult things to develop when you're learning to strum, because it's not always the most natural thing to not move your whole arm. Also, choosing a a good pick for strumming is a good thing as well. This is a kind of a medium to soft pick, but if I were to play like on a really hard pick, it would be much more difficult to make it through all the strings without, you know, with getting a good tone and all that. So the next step is to take that and play two chords, so let's say E and A. Start like this, which is the eighth notes again. So, that is basically how you strum a guitar. Also, with strumming it's important to have a good time. A good tool to practice with is a metronome. Pretty simple; you just set it to whatever speed you like to play it. Ninety beats per minutes is a pretty average speed, and you start simply, so we'll start with quarter notes. Then you move on to eighth notes, and then from there you start to work on several different patterns and different chord productions as well."