Upstrokes

[Skyman911]

My only suggestion is to go very slow, and gradually increase your speed. People hold their picks in many different ways, so I don’t think if you can strum, you pick position may be OK.

[bowcoach]

Thanks for the reply. I was figuring that I would have to do like baby steps with it. It will come with time and practice.

Thanks

[JimQuiz]

All the stuff mentioned here is good. If you can, try a thinner pick. That may help. Tilt and slightly rotate your pick, see if that helps. Dont worry about hitting all the strings on the upstroke. I am guessing you will find that with hours you will solve this issue.

[jumpinjeff]

Skyman’s Rx is on the money…this does 90% for me. The last 10% refinement comes by playing as softly as possible while playing at slower speed. This dials in my accuracy. It also forces me to relax my physical while also letting everything Beyond The Physical relax as well. In this state I can play to remove any excess movement that may cause inconsistant and inaccurate attacks. I heard this on a spy show…….slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Sure applies to guitar anyhow.

[Bayvu2]

So I have only been doing this for a couple of years. When I started I had all different types of picks and tried many. I always went back to a thin pick cause it seem smoother down and up. Now, I am trying to graduate to thicker picks cause I have starting to hear the difference. With a thin pick, it may be easier to strum, but the sound is more “Fluttery”, if that is a word. The thicker the pick, the better the sound but it becomes hard to strum. I tell myself, practice, practice practice.

Just my thoughts.

[petelanger]

You need to be very loose while playing. Choppiness comes from digging into the strings and to get a nice sound you really just brush or lightly stroke the strings.

First hold the pick loosely in your fingers

Second move your hand uniformly up and down.

To visualize how to do this: let your hand hang down and pretend you are shaking water off of it. That’s the motion you are after. When playing rhythm your hand always moves up and down, the strum patterns indicate times when you miss the strings either going up or down, the motion doesn’t change.

a common pattern is:

Down – MISS – Down – MISS – MISS – Up – Down – Up

Your hand just goes up and down moving like a metronome and selectively hits strings which results in rhythm. Every time there’s a miss it’s an 8th note pause. Above there are 2 misses in a row on the 3 and the AND of 3 so full quarter note pause. It’s not easy to learn this, takes a good deal of rehearsing but there are apps that are helpful. Since this is often not explained when you pull up TABs and strumming patterns, many people stop moving during these pauses, the slowing and speeding up of the hand will cause jerkiness or choppiness as you called it.