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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → strumming the guitar with your thumb.
When strumming back and forth on your guitar, you thumb does get stuck in the strings. It also feels weird and takes a little bit to get used too. The way I got used to the thumb strumming was practicing an hour a day. When I would watch TV or just sit around I would grab my guitar and strum back and forth. Try it...it REALLY works. ( :
Strumming with your thumb is fine, as long as you still practice with a pick from time to time. Playing with a pick will help you hear when you aren't hitting your chords correctly. You may be "deadening" a string or two and you won't notice if you're strumming with your thumb. If you're not good at barre chords, they'll sound great strumming with your thumb, but not when you use a pick. I used to strum with my thumb a lot when I was in college and living in the dorms so I wouldn't disturb my neighbors late at night. But I still played with a pick during the day. Play it loud so you can hear your mistakes and correct them.
I like fingerpicking for some reason. I don't listen to all that much fingerpicking music, but I rather like it in my playing. Goes back to my bass days, I guess. Anyway, when I play with a pick, it took me a while to figure out to use a fairly soft pick to let me hold on more. So I kept dropping picks until figuring out that little nugget of information for myself. But I wouldn't stop playing the song, I'd just start strumming with my fingers. I found that if I do my downstrokes with my index finger and my upstrokes with my thumb that I didn't catch. By having the fingers at an angle to the strings, and because I already had some bit of nail protruding from my finger for the fingerpicking, the strumming went a lot better. Now, to Crowellb's point, using a pick is still better for strumming I think. But, if you HAVE to strum with your fingers, try that thumb/index finger technique and see if it works for you.
- Zurf
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → strumming the guitar with your thumb.
