how to play acoustic guitar - an accent strum

A large part of learning to play acoustic guitar is based around a solid and reliable strumming technique. If up to now you have spent most of your time on chords and neglected learning those big Universal strums you‘re going to find that you‘ll probably hit a brick wall when it comes to learning songs. Part of the mission of Guitar in a Nutshell is to give you a complete selection of the most important and useful strums you’ll find anywhere so that your strumming will no longer present any problems and you can simple move forward once and for all into song playing with ease.

As discussed in an earlier article on the site we initially learn 3 big Universal Strums labelled 1, 2 and 3. After this however we can afford to focus our attention on more specialised strums, these will fill in the gaps and equip you with a complete song playing system useful for thousands of songs. If you’ve been wondering how to play acoustic guitar properly then look no further than Guitar in a Nutshell!

In this particular lesson on strumming acoustic guitar we focus on something we call an Accent Strum. This is highly useful for a wide range of songs but particularly for older songs written by the likes of John Denver, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and CCR to name just a few. One of the best things about this strum is that it can also be modified in very slight ways to suit other songs based upon that same Accent rhythm.

The thing I like best about Accent strums is the fact that they force students to become more musical in their playing. This is due to the fact that for the first time we are trying to separate our bass notes from the harmony of chords and thereby create a much more musically defined strum which is a step beyond a basic beginner strum pattern. You’ll find that this is all presented in a way which is simple to understand and learn - that’s the hallmark of learning acoustic guitar with us.

Once you get the hang of it you’ll find that you will want to transform all your strums into this system of isolating your bass notes from the chord simply because it adds so much definition and style to the way you sound on guitar. We can also take this principal one step further through alternating which bass note we hit in the chord and this will create an even better effect. Once you begin to learn this technique you’ll find that you’ll also suddenly start to hear it in many songs for the first time. It’s always been there but up until now your ears simply weren’t open to identifying it.

The process of learning Accent strums goes hand in hand with learning the Bass notes of your chords. Each chord has a Tonic or Root note which underpins it sonically. It’s these notes, along with the 5ths, that we most often choose to isolate when strumming so you’ll need to memorize them as a side note in order to know which ones to hit while playing through any progressions. The good thing is that once you learn them for one chord that’s it, they will always be the same for that particular chord no matter the progression.

To learn acoustic guitar effectively it’s always important to understand exactly what you are doing and the sound you hope to create by hearing it your mind and practicing the new techniques very slowly. It’s only when you rush and neglect to follow this time honoured process that things can go wrong. I say ‘time honoured’ because all successful guitar players practice very slowly and learn to hear what they want to achieve in their minds first.