strumming technique

[peter_traj]

hi everyone.
does anyone have any tips on how to strum smoothly without the pick digging into the strings. i strum mainly from the wrist with the rest of the movement coming from the arm.i also angle my pick toward the ground on a down strum and then back up on the up strum. i have tried holding the pick in diferrent ways but i still ocasionaly dig in to the strings or the pick gets knocked out of my hand. please help me!!!!!
thanks guys, peter

[myym619]

I don't have any help...I have the same problem! Up strums seem to be the biggest problem. In order to overcome the problem I seem to overcompensate turning the top of my hand towards the strings so I don't dig in, but this really affects my rhythm. I've been hoping I will overcome this with practice...but have'nt yet. Any tips would be greatly appreciaetd.

[Guni]

Hi guys,

Yep, I know these problems - I was fighting with this technique quite a lot, especially when I became interested in funk guitar parts and rhythm guitar in general.

Now I can more or less only tell you that you gotta get through this by doing it over and over again.

I tried a lot - using different picks, different strings, different positions of arm / wrist but nothing really helped. So I realised that this is something that we have to pay the same attention to as say learning scales.

So I came up with special exercises for strumming.

1) Loosing your pick is good. This shows that you are very close to making it work. Most of the time strumming is a problem because someone holds the pick too tight. So, experiment with holding the pick so that you just don't loose it -- and find out the strength that is needed for this. Play straight 8th notes throughout and try different angles, positions, etc .... without loosing the beat. Start out without playing any chord - muting the strings and pay 100% attention to your right hand.

2) The best exercises for me was to practice tremolo exrcises on different sets of strings instead of all 6 strings.

Example: I practiced 16th notes on high e and b string while fingering thirds.

or e,b and g string while playing diatonic triads.

This helped me with having a closer look at movements, pick, wrist, arm ....

Hope that helps ....

Guni