One of the essential skills that you have to develop is strumming. If you know how to strum, all the singing is going to be taken care of especially if you are the only player in the church. Your goal is to make strumming like a reflex. You don't think about it anymore. Bring on the song and you're strumming hand knows how to carry the rhythm.
In this post, I will introduce rhythmic slash notations which will be used throughout. It looks like this:
Downstroke refers to strumming down. Upstroke is strumming up.
Additionally, there will be numbers on top of the measure like this.
They represent how you COUNT. Thus, if you see 1 2 3 4, then you count 'one, two, three, and four'. If you see (like the above) 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +, then you count 'one AND two AND three AND four AND'.
Finally, notice the red downstroke symbol on top of 1? That means your strumming is ACCENTED there. You have to strum louder there than the other strokes. So:
That's it. Now that you know how to interpret the rhythmic slash notation, let's get started with downstroke exercises in the next post.
UP NEXT:
Downstrokes: Pattern #1
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