A 6:8 Strumming Pattern

Same here i’m not in a band ,but by playing standing i move side to side instead of tap my foot almost always.
I will keep tapping on beat 1 and 4 and on all downbeats to see which 1 is best. Stitch with the 1 and 4 on one foot and 2 and 3 on the other is for 4:4 time right?

This is a really interesting point. I am desperately trying to ensure that I tap my foot correctly when playing ( because, this is the way) however at times it just seems to hinder my strumming rather than help so mostly just let my foot do whatever it wants and find it really comfortable to rely on a sort of internal clock feeling :thinking: maybe I’m overthinking the foot tapping as long as I can keep time.

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Hi OP! How are you? I don’t know if this is because I come from a little background with drums, but I tap something like: Right foot-Left-Left (or something like that while swaying my body somewhat to the music, while all the time I’m thinking in sixes: One and two and three and…It all depends on the tempo, if it is slower. If it is faster, I will actually do One e and a two and, as confusing as that original hodgepodge sounds

But metronome and/or click tracks in six eight is worth its weight in gold.

Hi Rick, thanks for your reply. The lesson you mentioned is one I follow always, listening to the song a few times before playing it is something I do regularly, I usually tap along for the main patterns and to work out the dynamics in the strumming I do also the counting…after some practicing I then can do without the counting. I also find some extra time to listen and tap away from the guitar…it’s really valuable. It just takes time to build skills, the 6/8 is more challenging because it’s usually faster. I do it a lot for my Classical Guitar practice as well, as the pieces are most of the times unknown to me, to get them into my musical imagination…the more listening and tapping with my finger along with the musicsheet the easier learning to play the piece will be.

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Keep tapping the foot. It’s a bit of a catch 22. If your internal clock is really well defined, you don’t have to tap. But if you can’t tap and play, then your internal clock isn’t well defined enough. Getting your foot tapping to automated helps with that.

I have pretty good internal time, but I find that tapping helps me through long pauses and time signature changes.

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Jason, this came up a few months ago.
See my reply and especially the video here: Pointers for foot tapping with a 6/8 time song? - #21 by Richard_close2u

Hi @CD02, keep trying to tap and don’t be like me. I found tapping physically uncomfortable as well as almost impossible to do whilst strumming. So I didn’t bother. I started using the metronome a bit but not enough. Having recently tried filming myself playing along (so I thought) with a metronome I have now realised that I need to do some remedial strumming work to fix my appalling timing. It doesn’t help that I am a lefty learning righty. The good news is that I find it much easier to tap my foot along with strumming with more experience under my belt. I have wasted a couple of years playing out of time, don’t follow my example!

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No it is for 6:8 time on the 1 tap dominant foot, 2 3 other foot, 4 dominant foot, 5 6 other foot.

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Ah ok i get it ,il try that too :smile:

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If I’m going to practice the 6/8 strumming pattern what would be the best BPM to use on Justin’s Time Trainer app?

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What ever BPM you can play comfortably with no mistakes. Then speed it up to push yourself.

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Ok, thanks for the tip.

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“In 6:8 time, we should accent Beat 1 and Beat 4, though to a lesser extent than Beat 1!

I’m finding that difficult to nail, I’m thinking lowering down the bpm to around 60. It’s suppose to be this hard?

On the video he accents beats 1 and 4 with the same amount of volume but on the text here on the website he says different, as I quoted above. On the previous lesson about the 6/8 he did the same (on the video he demonstrates one thing and on the text another thing).

Another thing is that he recommends practicing at 130bpm but then says to find the best bpm for ourselves.

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Personally, I would not worry about this point. If you can accent beats 1 and 4 with respect to the other beats, you are 95% there. Learn some songs in 6:8 and later on when you can play them in your sleep, you can revisit the relative accents on beats 1 and 4. That’s what I would do, anyway.

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Thank you :+1:t2:

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If playing 6/8 to a metronome and checking bpm you must be aware that the metronome needs to be set to 6/8. Measuring bpm with 6/8 can lead to confusion.
In 6/8 there are two main pulses, on beats 1 and 4.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Each of these six beats is an eighth.
two eighths = a quarter
three eighths = a dotted quarter
A dot against a note / beat extends its duration by half again.

If the tempo is given as 94bpm, you need to know if this is the bpm for quarter notes.
image
That would mean a tempo of 188bpm if considering eighths.
Divide that by three to get the tempo for the dotted quarter (between 62 and 63 bpm).
Try the metronome at 62 or 63 (for two beats per bar).

I hope that helps.

Cheers :smiley:

| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Moderator, Guide & Approved Teacher

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In Grade 1, Module 6, Justin says the second of the songs for the module is in 6:8 time. In the practice module I don’t see anywhere that the time signature of the songs are identified. Is there a place that is shown, or do I need to just hear the appropriate time signature (hard for this tone deaf guitar enthusiast)?

You might as well start learning how to do this, if you can’t already. Just listen to a song and try tapping (foot, finger, anything – but don’t use your guitar for this) along with it and also count. Start with 1-2-3-4 , 1-2-3-4 since most songs are in 4:4 time. Does the counting seem to fit? If the song is not in 4:4, it will feel off. Then try 6:8: count in 2 groups of 3: 1-2-3, 4-5-6. You don’t actually pause between the two groups, but it helps to group them like that.

Do this all the time, whenever you hear a song playing, and you will pick it up in no time. Good luck!

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In the 6/8 strumming there’s 2 strong pulses instead of 1 (as in 4/4). How the variation bars (Justin taught about variations in module 5) works? Do we still have to accentuate beats 1 and 4? It’s hard to do that.

How about the dynamics? The accentuation still apply when playing louder and softer? Again I found it to be hard to do it while accentuating beats 1 and 4.

Then what about in 4/4 (stronger strum on beat 1) like mentioned?

Is there a “default” way on all this?

Thanks and good night :night_with_stars:

By the way I got banned from the forums and Justin’s website at least twice (I was being a jerk on the forums I will admit) but now it seems that it’s everything fine (I have access to the Justin’s website to use the Practice Assistant and I can post here for a while now), I’m different now… so no hard feelings? :smiling_face:

No defaults, Renan, sounds like you understand the ideas. So now just about practice practice practice

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