I’ve been working on strumming and rhythm the past couple months dedicating myself to the metronome and taking Justin’s RUST strumming courses along with some other on line classes.
I didn’t realize how important until starting to play with other musicians. Lots of bad habits to break!
Question: My rhythm and tempo are improving but I always seem to drift back to the Old Faithful strumming pattern. I can do DDDD or DUDUDUDU but without thinking about it I drift back to Od Faithful. Should I accept this as my voice or should I try and break this habit. Will other patterns develop as I progress?
You should absolutely NOT accept this as your voice (whatever that might mean). If you have learned Old Faithful and can play it without thinking, you can do the same for other patterns.
Then you need to keep thinking about it, i.e. practice with focus, until these other patterns become as automatic as Old Faithful is for you now.
Not by themselves. For any pattern, you have to decide to learn it and focus on it until it becomes internalized and you can keep it going even when you stop thinking about it.
What really helped me to overcome my strumming rut was practicing on the JG Rhythm Book, following the practice indications Justin provides in the book. That meant working on my Rhythm skills independentely from guitar and strumming at the beginning. Among the achievements one that really was valuable was starting to recognise strumming patterns while listening to songs, and if you can recognise them the step to being able to play them is really short.
Aim for more than just Old Faithful, listen to music and don’t be afraid to make your own ipothesis on which strumming pattern is played or would fit. It’s a trail and error but there’s so much value in the process…the golden rule is always the same: IF IT SOUNDS GOOD THEN IT’S GOOD!
Richard, just did your strumming course. It was very helpful! I got a lot of great tips. Especially counting out loud, letting my three fingers dangle and holding the pick in a different manner. I know Justin went over all that but for some reason taking your session it really Clicked! Thanks!
Oh, that’s my pain as well: I’ve got couple of problems I’m trying to fix now
Tempo. It’s almost inevitable that I’d speed up tempo to the end of the song. If there is no clicking track - I’m in trouble. Especially if I sing at the same time.
I’ve got couple default strumming patterns that I just shift to when I lose my attention. Like in Let it be I want to play D_D_D_DU pattern, easy enough, no problem, but as soon as I start singing after couple of bars I shift to D_DU__UDU. It’s like magic!
I try to cure this with metronome and playing alongside the original track. And just focus on my strumming hand. As soon as I loose focus - I speed up or shift patterns. But I noticed that at least it happens less often, so I guess I’m making progress
I stumbled across something very helpful just recently. Recording myself using Garage Band the bar measures are marked. I use this as a sign post that it’s time for a 1 Downstroke. It also helps keep me in rhythm.
There are also a whole lotta “metronome” apps out there that have lights as well as sound for the beats (NOTE: your head may explode if you try to wade through them all)
So I splurged all of $3 and bought (on the iOS/iPad–but it also works on my laptop)
I will look into it! Scrolling through some of the lessons on Justin’s site I found a tempo calculator. You tap on the beats and it calculates the BPM. I’ve been looking for something like this! I bet your $2.99 app has this as well.
Yes it has that “calculate BPM from taps” ability.
More useful to me is the auto increasing BPM, the wider variety of time signatures, and the “dropped beats” as mini tests on how well I am maintaining the tempo without an outside influence — that and recording yourself, as you noted, will get you going in no time .
Thanks all, good advice! Back to the woodshed 
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