The Secret To A Great Rhythm Guitar Sound - Combining Strumming With Picking
by Simon Candy
In this video lesson, I show you how to pick and strum guitar at the same time.
You learn a 5 step process that gets you to a point where you can ad lib (ie. make up as you go) picking notes out of a chord and strumming.
Combining strumming with picking is something you do a lot of the time when playing rhythm guitar parts to a song.
Sometimes it’s more strumming with some picking, other times it’s more picking with a little strumming.
There are many possible combinations.
In this lesson, I show you 5 steps to strum and pick your guitar with ease:
1. Chordal Picking:
Here you learn the basics of chordal picking. What to do and what not to do.
2. One Bar On, One Bar Off:
Next, you train by alternating bars of strumming with bars of picking.
3. Half Bar On, Half Bar Off:
To further integrate strumming and picking, we will reduce the alternation of the two approaches to half a bar each.
4. Integrating Strumming/Picking Combinations:
Here, I show you the very important step of mixing together different strumming and picking combinations.
5. Randomize:
Finally, you learn how to randomise your picking and strumming combinations so you can make it up as you go.
Watch the video below to learn more:
Combining Strumming With Picking
Chordal Picking
Here is a typical chord picking pattern that we will use to combine strumming with:
Alternating - One Bar Strum, One Bar Pick
Here are two ways to begin combining strumming with picking alternating every other bar:
(i)
(ii)
Alternating - Half Bar Strum, Half Bar Pick
Here are two ways to begin combining strumming with picking alternating every half bar:
(i)
(ii)
Mixing Strumming With Picking Approaches
To further work with combining strumming and picking we can alternate the half bar approaches from the previous example like so:
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