Ok. We are looking at strumming and the very beginnings of playing with a metronome.
A metronome is a device that provides a steady pulse, a steady tempo.
Much steadier than my hand tapping on my guitar for us to practice to.
It's advantageous to practice to a metronome whenever you can
because you are setting yourself up to play more consistently when you play with other people.
You are getting rhythm in your head, in your muscle memory.
You are going to be a much better player even when you start practicing with these basic chords
if you start working with a metronome right off.
If you are going to be going to purchase a metronome I would recommend a digital one
as opposed to the one that has a pendulum on it.
Metronomes are the same price as a little tuner maybe fifteen to thirty five dollars to maybe even fifty for a decent metronome.
Make sure that you get one that you can plug headphones into so if you need it to be louder
you can adjust your volume and listen to it on headphones.
The metronomes I like to use have a tap tempo feature built into it.
This means you can be tapping on a button on the metronome and it will tell you what beats per minute it is.
So if you know that you want to practice at a certain tempo but you are not sure what that feels like as far as numbers.
You will start getting that in your head also as far as that is about 60 beats per minute or that is seventeen beats per minute etcetera.
First off before we get too much into playing with the metronome let's work on strumming and we want to review holding the pick.
It is really easy when we start strumming to get sloppy with it.
We just want to make sure that we've got the pick right here where the index finger and the thumb are joined at the palm of your hand
and you are relaxing these fingers.
As well as making sure you are using your wrist as opposed to your arm when you strum.
We are going to take these two chords and when the metronome starts we have it divided
so that when we are going to be changing chords every four beats.
So every time we get around one we are going to be strumming and then also changing from the E to the A.
This is going to help you practice doing this in rhythm and it's going to work on our strumming.
There are two basic strums that we are going to work on today.
The first is a down stroke which you have probably already figured out how to do at this point.
The second is an up stroke.
Pretty self explanatory.
A good drill for this is just to pick a chord like an E and practice trying to keep as steady as you can.
Switch chords.
When you are strumming again, a reminder to use mainly your wrist as you are strumming.
Let's fire up the metronome and I'm going to talk through some of the things I am doing as well as playing.