One of the biggest challenges facing any beginner guitar student is developing a good sense of rhythm and understanding strumming and how to take those basic chord shapes that you have learned in open position and actually turn that into something that sounds like music. And the first step is going to be developing a strong sense of rhythm. And I would say a strong sense of rhythm really is going to be the most important asset you could possibly have for any style of music and many times the best players are not necessarily the flashiest players but really the guys are the most solid. Everything they play just seems to have a perfect sense of time and rhythm.
So the first thing we really want to do is start with the three chords we will be using throughout these exercises and that's going to be our basic D Major chord, and Cadd9 chord and a G chord in open position. And some of these exercises are going to be very, very basic, designed for people who have just gotten into guitar playing and want to understand how to keep rhythm and the first thing that you really need to do, whenever you play any musical instrument is relax your muscles.
That goes for every muscle in your body but especially of course, your arms and your fingers and your hands. Rhythm really is going to come through a point of relaxation and if you tense up your muscles everything kind of stiff and up tight and won't really work very well.
Four-four time, really refers to four beats per measure. It's the most common time signature. In fact it's called common time and of course, some songs could be slow and some songs could be fast or anywhere in between, but most songs deal with four beats per measure. So if I were to just do basic strums, down strums with the pick four strums per chord.
So that's not too exciting obviously as a rhythm but it is solid. So that's the first step. If you are having trouble with that just keeping basic chord and notes, that would be the first step. And you could just do an exercise we are just strumming four D chords, four Cadd9 chords and go ahead and strum two measures or eight strums of the G chord. So it just sound like this.
So it's just a simple development of solid rhythm of chord and notes and an important step for any beginner. And I want to mention also that I chose these three chords for the exercise because they have the third finger in common. You can see that that doesn't move. Also, there sort of MVPs of chords. You really seem to see little progression and a lot of music where in the D chord, the Cadd9 and the G. and notice of course, from the Cadd9 to the G that third and fourth finger don't move. It's only a two strongest fingers, the first and second that move; another reason why that's a popular chord progression.
So let's take a look at some eighth notes strumming patterns next.
G chord, C chord, A minor and D chord make up a song. I could leave my first and second finger in place and my ring finger slides into the second fret of the third string.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services