Pick or strum? Both!

Learn to target individual strings while you strum. :)

You've asked for it - so here it is! A comprehensive lesson to teach you how to pick out individual strings while strumming on the guitar. It sounds great and definitely a fun skill to learn as an advancing beginner.

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Particularly when doing chord embellishments, you want to target specific notes within a chord while strumming your guitar. It definitely takes a little bit of practice, but it's something that most advancing beginners should be able to handle!

Learning how to target the individual picks, particularly with the up strums, is a very big deal! The following exercises will help you get started!

The Best Exercises

For the following exercises, we keep returning back to the bass note of the chord we're playing. This is very important in this technique, and you'll use it in different ways. Great examples are when you're alternating bass parts or when you want to pick out the bass note of a chord individually.

We'll be focusing on the thinnest strings to start off with because, most commonly, that's where you'll put chord embellishments if you're picking out the melody of a song, for example.

Exercise #1

We'll start simple, and you can use the tab available in the tutorial to follow along with me. Remember that you should have that relaxed feeling when you strum! So, this exercise should feel nice.

When you're strumming a song, you should be able to maintain that kind of relaxed feel. You're just trying to get some accuracy within that simple framework!

Of course, you can change up the pattern we've used in this lesson! Whenever you want, just make up your own pattern. But at the beginning, it's worth having a set pattern so that you practice this new skill!

Exercise #2

If your confidence is growing and you find the first exercise easy, here's another little variation you might like to try. This time, you'll first up pick on the third string. Check the video for more information!

An even bigger challenge would be to change between those two things, so start with the thinnest string the first time around and your open G string the second time around.

Explore!

This idea of picking out notes individually while strumming your guitar is a very cool tool to add to your regular strumming patterns. Once you get confident with it, experiment with different songs and see!

This really is a great thing to add to your guitar vocabulary, especially when you get into advancing beginners and early intermediate guitar stages.

If you're at that point, learning about chord embellishments and experimenting with chord shapes will give you loads of food for thought and things to get creative with. Happy trails!

Learn more! Check out awesome lessons to get out of the beginner plateau. :)