hello my name is drew James and today I'm gonna be showing you how to strum a guitar using your fingers and thumb not a plectrum I released a video about two weeks ago that was called how to strum a guitar for beginners with a pick and it was 8 top tips and I said in that video that if that video got 100 likes or more then I'll make a video about how to strum using your fingers and very very quickly that video got 100 likes which very grateful for thank you very much I think I need to start upping the amount of likes a little bit each side because I've had to make this really really quickly but rest assured I've done plenty of research and I'm going to show you in this lesson how to how to make the most out of strumming using your fingers and I'm going to be showing you about how there's different sounds depending on the mood of the song and and that's how you sort of holding your fingers on the strings without further ado let's have a look it's going to be a nice short quick lesson we're going to have two different camera angles going on so that should make it a bit easier for you to see what I'm doing so I'm going to be showing you three approaches to strumming using your fingers and your thumb now this isn't presuming that your finger picking picking individual strings this is all about actually hitting strings at the same time okay now before I get started on what actually to do with your fingers one general piece of advice is you don't strum from your arm so you're not rude you're not strumming like this okay what should be happening is the wrist should be turning should be flicking so as I strum you can see that my wrist is making a small motion you almost flick your wrist out so you like push your pinky away from you and that's what you should be working on not doing it all from the arm it just means that things are a little more fluid it means they're a little more relaxed and you have more control over your strumming if if you can work on it that way which I know you can just a case of getting used to flicking your wrist turning your wrist as you as you strum and at first it might feel a bit weird a bit alien and it feels easier to get a rhythm like this but just always remember to keep these fingers relaxed okay not the index and thumb for this particular thing that we're doing and just keep them relaxed okay flicking the wrist right I'm going to show you as I said three approaches this is the most general and the one that makes when you're strumming it sound a bit more like a plectrum okay so quite simply you're going to take your thumb and your index finger and what you're going to do is you're going to bring them together so that the thumb is just behind the first joint of your finger okay so it's sitting just here and you're just gonna you're going to grip like that and then what you're going to do is you're going to let this tip of your fingernail go down the strings so like that now you may be thinking oh well you know going to great my finger now whatever you won't if you don't if you don't hit too hard okay as I'm holding it I'm not completely straight like this and I'm not bending my wrist like this I'm keeping my elbow on top of the guitar at the back and as I'm strumming this angle of my finger has a 45 degree angle so you strum down like that always holding your thumb here on this point of your hand and then when you do an upstroke you use the tip of your index finger okay I'll show it to you on this camera you use the tip of your index finger on your up strum so you're holding your thumb like this and on the tip it hits the strings hit there so I'll do that slowly for you I'm going to take an E chord alright feel free to copy along so we're going to start just by doing very slow down strums licking the rest laying the fingernail go all the way down all six strings and not going squeak strums okay that's good now without strums we're going to go one two three and four on that up I'm just letting go of the finger momentarily with the thumb and you see the thumbs just start to rest at the back there so that I can do the abstract okay so we do that again you okay so see this is this is an up strum in as close to slow-motion as I can show you okay down on the fingernail up on the flat of the index so that's technique one next just using the thumb itself by the way listen to the difference this is the first technique and this is just misses with the thumb now you may be thinking okay I can't hear much of a difference but believe me there is this as a more like you're playing with a plectrum feel a more slappy feel against the strings a slightly live a more rock feel okay the side of the thumb is more mellow more easy-listening now it doesn't matter what technique you want to use but I would suggest that if you're doing a song where it's you know quite frantic quite loud pop song something up tempo then use this method if it's something where it's kind of ballads add a bit slower then try using the side of the thumb also if you're a beginner just use whichever technique out of these three feels the most comfortable feels right for you okay it's more important that you're keeping a rhythm going you've got a nice relaxed wrist whether you've got a plectrum in your hand or whatever technique you're using with your fingers it's more important to have that in the beginning and then experiment with these other ways but anyway back to using the thumb so for the thumb I'm not sticking the thumb into the sound hole I'm keeping the wrist flat laying parallel with the guitar so I'm not sticking it out I'm not pushing it that way so that when I do the strum I'm using the side of my thumb okay in this case we're going to be using this part of the thumb here okay and I'm strumming down on the side of the thumb keeping these fingers now relaxed I'm not obviously holding with the index and in for arts drums as you do the app just slightly turn your thumb down towards the floor so that it catches the side of your nail so as I'm coming up it's actually hitting the this this part of my thumbnail okay the side of my thumbnail on the up strum okay so that's strumming with the thumb slightly more mellow sounds okay and finally we can go now this is kind of one that I formulated myself when I first started I'm going to teach it to you because it may work it worked for me when I was when I was a beginner so we go thumb on the down index on the up so the flattened index thing that I showed you earlier on the up so we go thumb thumb index thumb index so I'm extending my index finger out now this gives you a mellow sound on the way down a slightly lighter sound on the way up and it means you've got a bit more control as you flick up to get a bit more volume out the strings there as I mentioned it doesn't matter which one of these three you use use one that is comfortable for you but the go-to one that I teach the beginners when they start out is the first one that I showed you thanks so much for watching this lesson really really hope you've enjoyed it if you do like technique lessons you know where it's not necessarily just about showing you how to play a song songs are great they're what keep us moving on and keep us inspired and probably the reason why we picked up a guitar in the first place but what you'll realize is that there's all these other areas of guitar that will make enjoying songs even better so for example being able to change chords quickly I've got a lesson over at the website learn guitar in London to show you how to do that what else have I got I've got a lesson showing you how to speed up any song a really simple short technique may want to check that and of course all my Barre chord videos as well which have been helping people on YouTube for some time now this lesson was brought to you by Brighton guitarists coder at UK they're a quirky independent guitar shop in yep you guessed it Brighton and please subscribe to my channel I release two new videos a week they're always acoustic guitar talk with patience understanding and you know I really love teaching people how to play guitar that's my job fell into it ten years ago by accident and I've been loving it ever since right and to help people all around the world is even more awesome so keep on playing have a great day you you