Ive completed module 1 and decided to buy the Song app.Awesome!Question though ,do you only strum when the Chord letter appears,you dont strum in-between. For instance when you see the A do you just strum once when you see it.Thanks guys.
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I think itās open to you to come up with a strumming pattern that works and that you can cope with. On the complex songs with fast changes Iām aiming for 4 simple downstrokes per line and as I get more comfortable trying some different patterns, but I donāt actually know. I donāt know why some songs have a chord once on a line and others have it twice. Certainly watching Justin in his left-handed videos he tries to do proper strumming, not just when the letter appears
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For most songs there is a strum pattern suggested. You get to it by clicking on the small āfret diagramā in the upper right (You can also practice the pattern there at different speeds). I use this as a starting strum pattern, but you can use a simpler pattern to get started. The dots on the main display represent the beat count, not the strum pattern. The chord display shows what chord is to be played and when it changes, but it is not the strum pattern. When one chord is shown on a bar, you would play this for the entire bar with whatever strum pattern you are using. When more than 1 chord shown on the bar, it indicates the chord changes, but it depends on the strum pattern how you would play it. E.g. if using Old Faithful (DDUUD) and the chord display shows C on beat 1 and G on beat 3, you would make the change on the U (the add, the small dot) after beat 3, i.e. there is no down strum on beat 3 in this pattern.
Also, many songs do not use the same strum pattern throughout the song, but there is only one 1 pattern shown. For those you can listen to the song and try to find a strum pattern that sounds good in the places where it changes or continue to use the one youāve been using. A simple example: you are playing a song with all down strums on the beat and then the song changes where only one strum is played on beat 1. You will likely hear this in the song and start to incorporate it .
I found the app to be a good tool for both learning to make chord changes at the right time and using a variety of strum patterns in time, all while having fun playing along to a song. I also found it useful to pick songs at random, not ones I knew. This made me listen to the song and try to play along with it without already having some knowledge of the song in my head.
I hope you find the app useful.
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Think of it like thisā¦ each line of dots is one bar, each individual dot is a beat within that bar. One chord ābubbleā at the beginning of a bar means you play it for the whole bar. More than one means the chord changes during bar, and the dot replaced by the chord bubble tells you on which beat the change occurs.
Also note that the strumming patterns suggested by the app are not necessarily the actual pattern used in the real version of the songs. Itās often changed to make it easier for beginners. Itās always worth listening to the real song and trying to work out the real pattern if you want to get it sounding spot on.
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