Choice of pick

Your pick will change your sound tremendously–thinner picks give

an airier sound, thick picks a fuller sound. It’s harder to play fast
with a thin pick

Pick angles: You want to pick more flat on the wound strings to
avoid that unpleasant scraping noise.

Practice playing with different pick angles without losing your

rhythm:
• straight–better for the lower strings to avoid a scrapey sound
unless you want that stankier sound.
• with the neck side of the pick on the downstrokes–gives a
smoother sound, better for the high strings, unless you want a
more aggressive sound
• with the bridge side of the pick on the downstrokes–often used in
jazz

Pick from the wrist, not from the elbow

You want your picking action to originate from your wrist. Don’t
move excessively from the elbow because it will hamper your
accuracy.

Sometimes people move excessively from the elbow because they

lack rhythmic confidence and think they need to do a lot of
extraneous movement to keep the beat.

Downstrokes
Practice playing downstrokes on each string (with the strings muted
with your fret hand) and notice how each string feels different
because of the string diameter.

Rest strokes: you want to angle your pick downwards a bit to get a
stronger sound.

When you’re down-strumming, you don’t have to always play all six
strings, unless you want that sound.
Upstrokes
When strumming, play only a couple of strings on your upstrokes,
unless you want more of an autoharp type of sound.

Triplets and shuffle eights

Practice picking down-up-down down-up down: down on all six
strings, upstroke on a couple of strings, and ghost note on the sixth
string

Shuffle eights leave out the middle part of the triplet

Practice shuffle eighths

• With all down strokes: Use a larger number of voices on your
initial strum and a smaller number on the second one. Practice
using different string groups.
• With down ups: practice using different string groups
Speed bursts
A great way to find your weak spots and practice those
Practice little passages that you can do fast, even if you have to
pause in between, and gradually add the rest of the lick/riff/etc.

Slow tempos
To not lose the groove at a slow tempo, subdivide it to eight notes
or sixteenth notes

Bluegrass strumming
This is one of the most beneficial things to practice for a rhythm
guitarist.
When you’re playing a slow tempo, subdivide it in your mind into
8ths or 16ths to keep yourself from drifting.
Quarter note strumming: you play the bass notes on beats one and
three and the chord strums on beats two and four, using all down
strokes.
You can practice chord forms that are difficult for you by holding
down the chord and practice the boom chick strum. When your
hand gets tired, mute the strings and continue working your picking
hand until your fretting hand is sufficiently rested.
Having your hand down on the face of the guitar helps to give you a
point of reference, especially at faster tempos.
Practice playing just the bass notes and the top 3 strings, both with
downstrokes
You generally want to use free strokes on the bass notes unless
you’re playing at a very slow tempo and you want to give the bass
notes more weight.
You want to move quickly and accurately to not get a buzz sound
when you put the pick back on the bass string to get the next bass
notes
Eighth note strumming: You can still do all downstrokes if it’s a slow
enough tempo, but you can also do a boom-chicka. Practice both
straight eighths and shuffle eighths and practice switching between
them.
Think of your bass strings as the left hand of the piano, where you
move to different bass notes, and your treble strings as the right
hand of the piano, where you stay in that area (in this case the top
three strings).
Practice different kinds of bass lines.
One particular pattern in your right hand can apply to different
chords (ex. you can use a similar right hand pattern with all the
chords that have 5th string roots)
Slow 3/4 time: you can either feel it straight eighths (boom-chick-
chick) or as triplets (boom-chick-chick-let).
You don’t always have to play some kind of boom-chick. For
example, at the beginning You can play

Troubleshooting your bluegrass strumming

With any technique you practice, always ask yourself “what does it
feel like,” (in terms of your body), “what does it sound like,” and
“what can go wrong.”

Notice the difference in sound when you include the alternate bass
note in your “chick” strum or not. It’s generally unadvisable, unless
you’re doing an alternate bass on the D & G strings on a chord on
the top 4 strings and you want a fuller sound.
Don’t think you have to play everything in the rhythmic gridwork
because that will destroy your options in terms of density. You want
to leave yourself room to expand your parts according to song
sections. For example, at the beginning of a tune that’s a slow 3/4
triplet feel, you might want to play sustained dotted half notes, then
to ramp it up a little more, play a strum on beat one and light quarter
notes on your bass notes on beats one and two, then do the latter
again but adding a little “-let” upstroke of the treble strings at the
end (one-two-three-let), then adding in some eighth notes on beats
one and two, etc. (see brad’s demonstration in pt. 3 of the bluegrass
section).

The wall of sound approach

Don’t strum all the strings on your upstrokes unless you want an
autoharp sound–playing from the elbow makes it difficult to control
your use of string groups and dynamics. Use dynamics and make
sure you have control of the string groups and dynamic levels at all
tempos.

Respect the bass line

Be precise in where you originate your strums from. For example,
you don’t want to hit the sixth string when you’re playing a chord
with a 5th string root.

Mini strums
Picking pairs of adjacent strings–practice moving between different
pairs. When you’re picking muted pairs of strings, notice the pitch
differences. A nice sound in between single note picking and wall of
sound.

Pedal tones combined with mini strums

Pedal tones can be in the bass or in the treble. For example, on an
E chord, you could hit the low E on every down stroke and hit
different mini string groups on the upstroke. Brad considers this to
be a vital exercise to do because it trains you to be precise and
subtle and moves you away from the “wall of sound” approach.
Also practice having the pedal tone on a high string with an
upstroke and hitting your pedal tone on a low string (this is the “hill/
outside” picking approach as opposed to the figure 8 approach
below). Brad feels that approach sounds best with a lighter pick, but
he suggests experimenting with different thicknesses of pick and
making your own artistic decisions about the different sounds.

Figure 8 strumming
The purpose is to hit lower strings on your upstroke–“valley/inside”
picking. Practice it by strumming down on the top three strings and
strumming up on the bottom three. There’s a little circular motion of
the wrist. You want to clearly establish the target of your upstroke.

Ghost strokes
Very important for maintaining the groove. You usually play them
softly on the bass strings.

Very helpful when you’re playing something like “chucks” on the 2 &
4 (try those with both down strokes and up strokes).

Always have the drum groove in your head.

When Brad teaches a lesson, he rarely has an agenda. He evolves

the lesson based on what the student has been working on. When
he plays a groove for students to play with or over, students tend to
want to jump in and play right away without really listening first. You
have to listen. You have to be able to hear something in your head
to play it well

Cigarette Boat vs Sailboat: Choosing Your Picking Scheme

Cigarette boat: all down strokes. Gives you a more driving sound.
Sailboat: down-up strokes. Gives you a more laid-back sound.
At the same tempo, both approaches will sound very different.
Sometimes, depending on the sound, you can mix the two

Executing Chord Changes: The choke

You don’t want to play the open strings on the “and” of 4 because it
sounds like adding “uh” at the end of every sentence.
If you have trouble eliminating it, don’t play the “and” of four. If
you’ve established the groove, the listener won’t miss it.
If you have common notes between the chords, you can let them
ring, but if you don’t, use the choke–drop the side of your picking
hand palm on the strings to dampen them

Laying down the backbeat

This is essential–you want to get your listeners tapping their feet
and nodding their heads.
You don’t want a mushy sound by accenting open strings
Use a palm slap (the muted “chuck”). You can sometimes tap with
your remaining pick hand fingers on the face of the guitar at the
same time.
Brad demonstrates playing a backbeat using mini strums,
alternating string groups on the “and” of beats 2 and four.
Good songs for practicing your palm slaps: Proud Mary for straight
eighths and I Love A Rainy Night for shuffle rhythm.
Incorporate the palm slap in all your playing, even if you’re doing a
lot of arpeggiation. It doesn’t have to be huge, just enough to keep
the groove.

Funk Sixteenths
Practice all the combinations of rings and deads and keep the
backbeat going.

Also practice down-down-up (one eighth followed by two

sixteenths). Remember to use lots of muting and mini string groups.

Arpeggios: Pick Stroke Protocol

Lowest energy level: just rolling up and down the chord in eighth
notes.

If you play nothing but eighth notes, you’re not going to have
enough space.

Hit the root of the chord on the downbeat and then play any
combination of strings you want.
For consecutive arpeggios (with no string skips), try alternate
picking them and also try playing all downs with an upstroke for the
last one to turn it around. Experiment with picking schemes, try
different combinations. Don’t just stick with whatever the first picking
scheme you fall into.

Experiment with density levels–single notes only is the leanest,

adding strummed pairs of strings adds more density (this requires
loosening up your hand from the single note only approach), adding
more strums adds more density, etc.

Legato Chord Changes

Whenever possible, when you have common tones between the
chord you’re on and the one you’re switching to, let them ring. Be
especially mindful of any open strings that you can let ring while
you’re switching chords.

Eliminating Squeaks
Pick your fingers up perpendicular to the fingerboard. Whatever
chord you play, you should be able to hammer on to your chords
and pick your fingers straight up. Don’t pick them up at an angle.