Guitar strumming styles. How to learn guitar strumming. And a small gift - a lesson in Spanish combat

One of the most common ways to produce sounds when playing the guitar is considered guitar fight, in the language of specialists called a rhythmic pattern. This is just one of the ways of sound accompaniment.

In ordinary language, guitar strumming is the production of sounds by striking the strings with the whole hand or only with certain fingers. This musical technique was first invented in Spain and was called “razgueado”. Subsequently, other types appeared, distinguished from each other by the frequency of strikes on the strings and the number of pauses.

for newbies

As a rule, guitar strumming seems very complicated for beginning performers, as it has many varieties and ways of producing sounds. Main ways to play:

  • If you play with your whole hand, the sound will be strong and loud, but it will be difficult to control the clarity of the sound.
  • You can hit with the tips of your nails, and your fingers should not protrude too far from the palm.
  • If you play by combining the big one, you get something like a pick.
  • You can also hit the strings with one fingernail, in which case the sound becomes cleaner, but quieter.

To make learning easier, you can use various guitar strumming patterns.

Schematic symbols

V - downward strike.

^ - blow from bottom to top.

i - strike with the index finger.

B - bass (bass string depends on the chord).

Muting the Strings thumb.

X - complete jamming with the palm.

Depending on the combinations of the above symbols, different kinds guitar fight. Having mastered several basic fights, you can play a large number of army, pop and courtyard compositions.

Simple fight

This battle is also called four and allows you to play a large number of songs. The rhythmic pattern is V ^ V X ^, where down is played with the thumb and up with the index finger. You can practice this variant of combat using the example of Viktor Tsoi’s songs “Cuckoo” and “Pack of Cigarettes.”

Variety fight

Otherwise called “six”, it is also a fairly simple and common battle. The diagram looks like in the following way: V V ^ ^ V ^ - without jamming and V V X ^ ^ V X ^ - with jamming on the 2nd and 5th beats. An example of the “six” is the compositions “Gaza Strip” “Demobilization” and “Agatha Christie” - “Like in War”.

The famous fight "eight"

This guitar strumming for beginners allows the musician to improvise over himself and get individual performance options.

Basic figure eight pattern: V _ V _ ^ V V ^ V ^.

For an improvised performance, you can change the order of finger strikes, play with muting, and also place pauses of varying lengths between strikes.

Thieves fight

These types of guitar strumming also have several variations in execution.

Schematic drawing: B V X B ^ V X

Depending on the chord, the bass strings will be different. For example, the 5th and 6th strings used for bass correspond, and for Dm - the 5th and 4th.

Country style

Historically, country fighting appeared in the folklore of European settlers. Now this style is known throughout the world no less than other musical styles.

Schematic drawing of country style: B V X ^ B ^ V X ^

Bass strings are played with the thumb and depend on the placement of the chord.

Spanish style

This type of combat is a variation of the figure eight. These patterns of guitar fights are difficult to study, since they involve the playing technique of “rasgueado”. Varieties of rasgueado:

  • A descending rasgueado is carried out from the lower string to the upper string. To perform it, you need to run a “fan” of fingers along the strings, starting from the little finger.
  • The ascending play technique is performed in the opposite direction. The fingers gathered under the palm slide like a fan along the strings, starting from the top.
  • The ring rasgueado combines both of the above techniques.

Famous Gaming Techniques

Undoubtedly, beginning musicians need to master guitar strumming lessons perfectly before moving on to style techniques. For general information, here are some of the most popular styles:

  • The barre technique involves plucking some or all of the six strings with your index finger. Depending on the number of clamped strings, the barre is divided into large and small.
  • Slide is a style of play using a device of the same name, worn on the finger. In this case, the slide should continuously slide along the strings, giving an interesting sound.
  • The sweep style is common among modern virtuosos. His technique involves moving quickly from one fret to another, thereby creating a "blurred" sound.
  • Tapping is a playing technique by lightly striking the strings on the fingerboard with the right hand. Sometimes it is possible to use both hands.
  • Legato is a peculiar way of extracting sounds on the guitar neck, produced by the left hand. It can be mixed, ascending and descending.

This is a long list of modern playing techniques and techniques that can be changed and improved, just like types of guitar combat.

Guitar fight

In order to be able to play the guitar, it is not enough just to know the placement of the chords. You also need to be able to extract sound from them. To do this, you need to study fighting techniques. Guitar strumming is a kind of accompaniment in which sound is produced from the guitar strings by striking them with the right hand or a pick. So, there are several varieties of it. Here I will try to explain the principle of guitar strumming as accessible and simple as possible.

Simple guitar strum

So, first, practice counting exactly to eight: one-two-three-...-eight. It is very important that this count is even (with equal intervals between numbers). So, the battle consists of striking the strings in turn up and down. One - down, two - up, three - down, four - up. Repeat several times to strengthen this skill. This is the foundation on which all other combat skills are built.

Another simple guitar strum

One - down, two - up, three - a pause (that is, nothing is played, at this time the right hand is moved down, but without hitting the strings), four - up again. This is the most popular type of battle for noisy companies and songs in the style of Tsoi’s “Eighth-Grade Girl”.

Fight "six" on guitar

This is one of the most popular types of guitar accompaniment. As you can easily guess from the name of the battle, there are six strikes on the strings. It is played as follows: one - down, two - pause (moving the hand up without hitting the strings), three - down, four - up, five - pause (moving the hand down), six - up, one seven is down, eight is up. There were six hits on the strings in total. This fight is not easy. However, once you learn how to play it, you can play almost any song.

Figure eight on guitar

This type of combat is a little simpler. It is played like this: One - down, quickly moving the hand up, two - down again, three - up, four - down, then again quickly moving the hand up, five - down, six - up, seven - down, eight - up.

Another interesting fight - Spanish guitar fight

This type of combat is quite difficult for beginners, but practice makes all the difference. The main thing is to understand the essence and principle, and then reproduce it yourself and repeat until it turns out perfect. This technique is also called "rasgueado" or "fanning" because the technique is visually similar to opening or closing a fan. So, the Spanish fighting technique. The fingers are gathered together into a fist, but not tense. Imagine that you are holding a butterfly in your right hand - at any moment you can straighten your fingers and release it. In this case, the little finger may not participate in this - it is not needed. As soon as you bring your hand to the strings, begin to sharply straighten your fingers and hit the strings with each of them. First, straighten the ring finger, then the middle one, then the index finger. You have “opened your fan.” Repeat this for more fast pace so that the strings ring continuously throughout all three beats. Some sources indicate that the little finger can also be used. This will only give the sound fullness and volume. Such a “fan” is called ascending - from the lowest string to the highest (by sound, not by location!). There is another type of Spanish fighting - downward. It is performed by striking from the highest string to the lowest. We now “close” our “open fan” by striking first with the little finger, then with the ring, middle and index fingers from the highest string to the lowest. This again creates a continuous stream of sound. Another option is to combine the first and second types of Spanish combat. First ascending and then descending. This technique is called "ring fan".

So, have you finally become the proud owner of a six-string guitar? Congratulations! There are long, amazing evenings of exploring music ahead, as well as continuous performing and creative pleasure! All that's left to do is start playing! Perhaps you even managed to get your head around the diagrams in the tutorials and master the basic chords, after which you moved on to training your fingers in order to correctly press the learned chords on the guitar neck. But very soon you will suddenly realize that even a very agile change of chords does not form a song by itself - something is still missing... But what? Of course - guitar fighting!

What is it about? Let's figure it out. Strike is one of the main techniques of guitar accompaniment, in which your right hand casually, but quite sharply strikes individual strings or all of them at once, which leads to sound production. This technique has big number options that differ from each other. Some of them are quite simple, and you will learn them quickly; others, in contrast, have a high degree of complexity, and in order to master the appropriate technique, you will have to work hard.

From the outside, sometimes everything seems surprisingly simple: the performer’s hand moves up and down, striking the strings and making them sound. But when a novice guitarist begins his first attempts to independently play music on the guitar, he often encounters a number of problems. For example, concentrating on the fight, he forgets about the timely change of chords. Or, with good control over the chords, it goes astray and hits the strings out of place.

Despite the fact that the right and left hand guitarists perform different functions - their actions must be coordinated. Don't start training with a difficult fight. As the Russian folk proverb says: “Simplicity is the key to success.” Some beginners learn very quickly - as they say, they grasp everything on the fly. Other beginners will need to go through a learning curve of weeks or even months. But in the end, if you really want to learn to play the guitar with all your heart, you will definitely master this science.

Practice shows that even those who are deaf can learn to play the guitar (and, by the way, quite well!). Yes, such people are unlikely to be able to perfectly tune a guitar or pick out any melody by ear, but nothing will stop them from achieving good playing technique, rest assured. All you need is desire.

Now let's get back to the question of guitar strumming. Do not try to immediately, literally at a glance, study some intricate battle. Move from simple to complex gradually - gain experience slowly. Beginners are generally recommended to start with the simplest “down - up”. Play this exercise an even number of times on each chord. It will be great if you keep score at the same time. The hand slides down the strings - count “one”! Returns, touching the strings, upward - the score does not change. The hand goes down again - count “two”! Returns upward - the score does not change.

Not so difficult, right? Soon you will want to make your battle more beautiful. Please. To do this, try not to touch the strings when returning your hand up (when the count does not change). You will only have to move your hand a short distance from the strings, without losing your usual count.

Well. The foundations have been laid. Desire and diligence - and soon you will definitely achieve tangible progress in playing the six-string guitar! Your goal is to synchronize the actions of both hands as much as possible when playing the instrument. However, in this review, dedicated to guitar combat, action right hand we are interested in first of all.

Four (4)


The easiest and most common guitar strumming, with the help of which probably about 50% of all existing songs are performed. It is also called "thieves" fight. It is played according to the following scheme: thumb down - index up - with a plug thumb down - index up.

Six (6)


We will get such a fight by slightly modifying the four (4) and accelerating its pace. Game pattern: 2 strokes down - 2 strokes up - 1 stroke down - 1 stroke up. You can add a plug on the second and fifth beats. Such a fight is also called “variety”; it objectively wins in beauty compared to the four (4).

Eight (8) - Spanish


A fight with a more interesting rhythmic pattern. By the way, this option is also known as “Spanish”. Game pattern: 2 hits down, 1 up - 2 hits down, 1 up - 1 hit down, 1 up. With the same scheme, you can use a plug.

And others, no less popular:


Also in different sources you can find such fighting options as “reggae”, “troika”, “rumba”, “Chechen”, “country”, as well as fights named after a specific performer (Vysotsky, Rosenbaum, etc. .). But in essence, all of these are just variations of the battles already known to us. On the portal "Gitaransk.ru" you can familiarize yourself in more detail with the types of guitar strumming using the diagrams and videos provided. I wish you success!

When a beginning musician picks up a guitar, one can hardly expect that he will immediately be able to play something truly beautiful. The guitar, like any other musical instrument, requires constant practice, especially when it comes to types of guitar strumming. In general, very often learning to play the guitar begins not with studying notes, but with practicing the simplest guitar strumming.

Types of guitar strumming

Of course, it is advisable to start mastering chords in parallel with guitar strumming, but for starters, a simple simple chord combination will be enough. At its core, guitar strumming is a kind of accompaniment that involves striking the strings with a pick or the fingers of the right hand. We can safely say that this is also a guitarist’s secret weapon, the possession of which will greatly help to better master a musical instrument.

In this plan key moment- hitting the strings, and they come in several types. You can strike the strings down with your index finger or mute them with your right thumb. You can also strike the strings upward with your thumb. For a beginner, these fights are quite enough, but many would also like to master Spanish techniques, known for their expressiveness. The most common Spanish guitar strum is the rasgueado, which is also called a “fan.”

Spanish and simple combat

An ascending rasgueado is performed from the sixth string to the first, and to perform this technique, you need to gather all the fingers, except the thumb, under the hand, and then open the fan, running each of them along the strings. This should result in a continuous continuous stream of sound. But the descending rasgueado is performed from the first to the sixth string and the point is that all fingers, starting with the little finger, slide from the first string to the sixth and produce a continuous sound. The ring rasgueado combines ascending and descending rasgueado, but these are fights for more experienced guitarists, and it’s worth starting to learn how to play the guitar with a simple guitar strum.

A simple strike is striking the strings up and down alternately, and to become familiar with it, it is enough to learn how to perform it with the index finger of your right hand. Next connects thumb, which strikes the strings downwards, while the index strikes upwards. At the same time, you can perfectly train your right hand. There is another very common yard fight, which is usually used to accompany songs. It involves six strokes on the strings and the only difficulty is to clearly and correctly mute the strings with your thumb when hitting down.

Four- the simplest guitar strumming. At the same time, they can play 90% of all songs.
It's played like this:
down – up – down with mute – up

We play down with our thumb. Up with your index finger. Marked with an asterisk jamming.

How to play jamming?

You clench your palm into a fist and straighten it so that you hit the strings with your nails. At the same time as you strike with your nails, you need to place your thumb on all the strings. The nails make a click, and the thumb muffles the strings.
Once you've learned jamming, play with it. fight four described above.
Video: Fight four and jamming the strings

For working out battle four play the band's song Kino-Pack of Cigarettes
Chords Em Am C D.
One beat for each chord.
Do not hurry. Spend as much time on this strum and these chords as you need to play with confidence and not have to worry about where to stick your fingers. Some people need a week, others a couple of months, it doesn’t matter.

Also practice the standard sequences with this fight:
Am Dm E Am
Dm G C Am
Em C G D


Six- the second easiest fight. And the most popular.
They can also play 90% of all songs. In many songs fight six sounds more driving than fight four.
In addition, thanks to the presence of pauses, this battle can be played much faster than a four-man battle.

It's played like this:

To better understand how to play it, play this structure:
down-up-down-up-down-up-down-up
Those. just down and up 4 times, each blow of the same duration.

And then throw out 2 blows from it, the second and the fifth (these are up and down blows).
But don’t just throw them away, but run them through with your hand without touching the strings. This is called idle hand.
Those. the hand always moves up and down with the same frequency, sometimes it just doesn’t play, it moves idle.
This principle is based not only fight six, but also many others.
It's more clear in the diagram:

  • Black arrow - strike the strings
  • White arrow - idle (hand moves, but does not play)
  • Down arrow - play down, up arrow - up, respectively

The second way to understand this fight:
We break it into 2 parts and work on them separately:
1) down-up idle-down-up
2) down idle-up-down-up
Now let's combine both parts.

Practice battle six thoroughly using our already favorite sequences:
Em Am C D
Am Dm E Am
Dm G C Am
Em C G D
Play the same fighting six song Cinema-When Your Girlfriend Is Sick
Chords G Em C D
In the chorus C D G Em
One strum for each chord

As we can see, in the lead and in the chorus the chords are the same, it’s just that in the chorus the sequence starts with the C chord

Let's add jamming to battle six.
How to play jamming is described above in the four-man battle.
As we already know, six taking into account pauses it is played like this:
down – down – up – up – down – up

Jam on the second and fifth strike (downward strikes)
It will turn out like this:
down – down with mute – up – up – down with mute – up

Jamming is marked with asterisks.
The muffled impacts will occur after the same amount of time, i.e. they will keep the rhythm.
Yes, in fact, it is easily noticeable if you count the number of shares from one asterisk to another.
It is equal to four.