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Upstroke Challenges
Working on week four of my guitar journey and I’m having issues with my upstroke on my picking hand. I can hit the downstroke consistently, but on the upstroke I drown out the notes with the high E. It seems the more I focus on this the worse it gets. Any advice from the hive? TIA…
JWB🚳
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5 Replies
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@sycolyst Go Slow, relax your grip on the pick and just keep at it. Set a timer and try it 10 minutes a day and you will begin to see progress. BTW, that setting a timer thing really makes a difference – you find out that 10 minutes can be a long time
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@sycolyst I tend to have a lot of high E on my upstrokes to. There’s nothing really wrong with it. Balancing out strumming is difficult between the down and upstrokes. Loosen your grip on the pick, and make sure you turn your wrist to angle down for downstrums and up for upstrums. This will force the pick to angle in the direction you’re strumming and not meet so much resistance against the strings. It simply takes time and practice. I used to warptch YouTube videos of other musicians strumming to see how they were holding the pick and their wrist.
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Thanks for the suggestions and help. I imagine that it is just like anything else…practice makes perfect. After thinking about it and digesting your advice, I’ going to incorporate a down AND up into the chord change exercises. In an effort to help with my chord change speed, I will do a rapid-fire chord strum exercise where I change a chord each strum. I have been only doing the down stroke, why not add an upstroke to help with my shortcoming. Anyway, thanks for the reply and encouragement. This place rocks.
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Chuck pointed out one of the main tips. Slower is better to start. But wait there is more. Relaxation also mentioned is key!!! But wait there is more. Hit those strings as softly as you can (like a whisper) with your pick and then maybe after a few minutes strum as loudly as you possibly can. Then after a few minutes do the soft strum again. I found this helped me to control my strum motion which was way to much motion when I started. It helped me learn how to strike a strings loudly with control and precision. It did not take as much strength as I thought it did to tickle out the guitars max volume capabilities. Let the guitar do some work and you will save yourself some effort.
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Great advice! I really appreciate the help. I also tried a lighter gauge pick and that seemed to help. I’m a work in progress…..but undaunted. Just having fun.
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