[DavidScoggins]

What ever works for you, do that. Something I would add is that one good way of using a metronome is to focus on strumming and smooth chord changes. For example, set your desired BPM and decide on a chord progression, you could the one from the Friday key chord changes for example, and play a bar of one chord with alternate 8th note strumming then a bar of the next chord and so on. For a i, iv, v progression in A minor that would be:

1 bar of Am

1 bar of Dm

1 bar of Em then repeat.

Focus on accuracy above speed, and if you need to go pretty slow to begin with, no problem. As an alternative to 8th note strumming, try just strumming on the beats, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 16th note strumming: 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a.

For more of a challenge accent some of the beats in each bar while maintaining alternate 8th note strumming, e.g. beats 2 and 4. This gives the progression a driving rhythm and is used quite commonly, David Bowie’s Heroes is a good example. Here’s my effort at this track from a VOM earlier this year, not perfect by any means but it hopefully illustrates my point.

https://tonypolecastro.com/family-forums/topic/heroes-saturday-night-vom-performance/#post-2089444

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  DavidScoggins.