mike passaro

It’s Tuesday, and I’m in a giving mood.  I might have been inspired by DaleBakerDrummer and his Tricked Out Tuesday post.  In this post, I hope to get all you budding guitar players off and running in your attempt to be the next Eddie van Shredder.

There are many places to start for my first free lesson, but I want to start in a place where lessonees seem to struggle the most.  I’m assuming that your guitar is tuned, because most guitar stores “throw in” (for $30 extra) a “free” tuner. Use it. Playing an out of tune guitar is no fun for you, or the rest of us.  When you pick up your guitar, tune it. It’s that simple.  Over time, your ear will learn the intervals, and maybe even the pitches.

This is where the actual lesson begins.  Many young “Eddies” come to me all the time and say, “Sensei, you must teach me how to strum. You must give me a new strum pattern. Should I go ‘down, up, down, down, up, up, down…?”  To which I respond, “You have much to learn in the ways of the strum.” (Then, I make them chop ice blocks and paint the fence.)

Strumming is not karate. It is not up, down, up, down. Strumming is a rhythmic exercise and rhythms involve counting, feel, groove, and accents.  It’s music, not sport.  So, training yourself to think in non-musical terms is to your musical detriment and stunts your growth.  The alternative? Learn to count.

Consider the two measures below:

[The two measures are counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 | 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and |.  You can see, in measure two, that the rhythm is consistent.]

Measures (or bars, get it, where you see the line?) are the common musical dimension. In a measure, you have beats that are given a specific value of time. In a standard 4/4 measure (think most pop music), the 1/4 (quarter) note gets the beat. So, in 1 measure, you have 1 whole note.  A whole note in 4/4 time can be divided into 4 quarter notes. Quarter notes can be divided into Eighth notes, eighth notes divided into sixteenth notes, and so on.  A complicated “strumming pattern” is merely a combination of quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and 32nd notes…

Using a free metronome set to 76 bpm, work on making steady 1/4 notes. You can do this going down, up, down, up or 4 straight down strums, but don’t think “down, up”. Think “1 2 3 4″. Then move to what in drumming can be called the check pattern.  You’re going to “check” a rhythm down the line, or down in the measure.  When you are comfortable playing quarter notes (with the metronome at 76) move to | 1 + 2  3  4  | 1 + 2  3  4  | then | 1  2 + 3  4 | to | 1  2  3 + 4 | to | 1  2  3  4 + |.  Do you see it? Do you see how a simple play with a quarter note/eighth note rhythm turns into multiple different strum pattern options?

Next time, I’ll work with eighth note/sixteenth note rhythms.  But, if you are good students, you will google it, and apply a 16th note check pattern to a base 8th note rhythm.  (Hint: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + | 1 e + a  2 + 3 + 4 + |…

Hope this is helpful!