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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → Liven up strumming...
Hello, fellow chordians...
After two years of practice I have come to a point where I can come up with a suitable strumming pattern for pretty much any song over a nice repertoire of chords, do some intuitive embellishments with suspended chords and the occasional right hand muting, all while singing along to my own playing.
Now I wonder, what other ways are there to liven up my strumming?
Thanks in advance for advice.
Cheers,
nc
add some finger picking.
you're a maestro for sure 
try playing some bar chords with some left hand damping - great for funk reggae and ska
@tonydr: I saw some dude "hide" his pick in his curled up first finger and using thumb, 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger for, say a fingerpicked solo or middle eight. Is that what you mean?
@johncross: that's how did my first attempts of muting, seemed easier to me than doing it with the right hand, I guess a combo of both is where it's at?
anyway, thanks for the replies!
Flamenco style "rasgueo" strumming.
That stuff is cool.
Try the Shane and Shane double Strumm. 3CF
That is cool, but significantly more difficult. I meant you can simply play songs without a pick. Use your thumb to provide a bass rhythm on the root note (1,2,3,4) and add the other 2,3 or 4 in between. This is an alternating or pattern picking style. There is a popular fixed pattern call Travis style that you will recognize in many songs. You can supplement the melody, or embellish the rhythm and get really good and add it to soloing on your electric.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerpicking
Take a listen to Blackbird off the Beatles White Album. A very simple pattern using open chords.
Or try Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by green day without a pick. Pretty easy to get the feel on that song.
Then graduate to Classical Gas.
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → Liven up strumming...
