GUITAR
STRUMMING WORKOUT 3.0 | David Harsh
In the November 2024 issue of Worship Musician, we released an article / video called Strumming Workout 1.0. This interactive lesson became our most popular offering so far, so in January 2025, we made a follow-up Strumming Workout 2.0.
Now we’ ve got the 3.0 workout here for your enjoyment and artistry.
I invite you to experience today’ s workout as a play-along experience by clicking on the thumbnail for the video, which takes you through the actual workout – I highly recommend taking time to go through it. You can also follow along with the diagrams I’ m providing here.
To keep things simple, we won’ t be playing chords for this workout. I’ ll invite you to take your fretting hand and gently rest it against the strings to mute them. No need to press down. It should sound pretty dry without any notes. Also, as I mention in the video, a Gruv Gear FretWrap can eliminate string ringing behind the nut.
So, as we get started, let’ s warm up with some simple down-strummed quarter notes at 96 BPM( a). Good news- you don’ t need to tune your guitar because we won’ t be playing chords today.
Next up, we have 8 th notes( b). Then, we have 8 th note triplets( c). With these triplets, the first and third beats will have accented down strums, and the second and fourth beats will have accented up strums, which is a bit unique, because we typically strum down on the beats. Not here. This process is unique to triplets, but it totally works.
After this, we move on to a shuffled rhythm where we remove the second triplet partial. This can look like a tuplet with a quarter note, then an eighth note inside the triplet bracket( d) or it can be written with straight eighth notes with an indicator that it will be shuffled or swung( e). Note that these diagrams include wide green arrows to indicate the delayed upstrums.
54 May 2025 Subscribe for Free...