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My fellow bassists,

I've been seeing a lot of comments asking for some tips / exercises on strumming, so here's an exercise for you!

To strum down, use your wrist and flick your fingers outwards. The nails on your middle and ring fingers should make contact with the strings indicated in the tabs. For eighth-note strums you can just strum down on all of them.

To strum up, just rotate your wrist back to the starting position and pop the G string with your middle finger, similar to how you do it when you slap but maybe a little lighter. For 16th-note strums you'll need to use double strumming (strum down and strum up).

As always, let me know if you have any questions about this and I'll make sure to get back to you ASAP! Also, I haven't forgotten about the winner of this month's poll which was using music theory to create bass lines / solos, but I've been traveling recently and haven't had the time to do it justice. Hopefully I can get that done for you in the next couple of weeks!

Thanks for coming here and practising with me, have a great day and I'll see you in the next lesson!

Charles

Comments

Josquin Cornec

Hi, I have a beginner question about strumming up. On the sheet there is a cross for the G and D string, however you have written to "pop the G string with your middle finger". It is far easier to strum down the G and D string and to strum up only the G string. Is that the correct way to strum ? Best regards

Charles Berthoud

Yes that's the easiest way, and that's how I do it! The strumming notation shouldn't be seen as 100% precise because it doesn't really matter if you accidentally strum the A string too, for example, as long as it's muted. Strumming up is much easier on just the G string so I would recommend that!