Silent Stroke

Silent Stroke Symbol

In previous lesson we covered an eighth note strum pattern that involved a continuous down/up strum pattern:

 We will now introduce the idea of a silent stroke and incorporate it into this continuous down/up strum pattern.


When you see these symbols:

Silent Stroke symbol

 you do not stroke the strings but let your strumming hand continue to move over the strings so that the down/up pattern of strum is not broken. This is something that you are already doing natually, we just haven’t notated it yet. Silent stroke symbols allow us to write more complex strumming patterns because we can start to miss out those strokes that fall on the beats 1, 2, 3 and 4 as the following exercise demonstrates.




Exercise:
Play the following chords using the strum provided. Make sure that you don’t hit the strings
on beats + of 1 and 3, this is called an ‘off beat’. On beat refers to the beat when it falls ‘ON’
the count i.e. the 1, 2, 3, or 4 count. The off beat refers to when the beat falls ‘OFF’ the
count i.e. all the + (and) beats.

Notes on the Sixth String

The sixth string is also known as the low E string.

Exercise:
Pluck the following notes. This time, play the notes with a down/up picking motion.