The march

What it’s for

The march is one strum per beat: 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s it. Use it to lay down chords when you’re starting out, to back a slow song, or to mark the beat when you don’t know a song’s strumming pattern yet.

It has a more important job too: teaching you the basic motion. Between two strums, your hand goes back up. In the march, it goes up without touching the strings. That little silent up-and-down is already the pendulum behind every pattern that follows.

How to practice it, step by step

1. Muted strings first. Lay your fretting hand flat across the strings without pressing. Strum four downstrokes while counting “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”: your hand goes down on the numbers and back up on the “ands.” All you hear is the rhythm.
2. On one chord. Play G, four strums per bar, for a full minute. Every strum should be the same volume.
3. With a chord change. One bar of G, one bar of C. Change chords as your hand comes back up after beat 4: that’s the only moment your fretting hand has time to move.
4. Up to tempo. Start at 60 on the metronome, then go up 5 at a time to 90, without the chord changes breaking the rhythm.

Common mistakes

• Your hand stops after each strum. It should come back up right away, in one smooth motion. If it waits at the bottom, the next strum comes in late.
• Uneven strums. That’s what the metronome is for: every strum lands right on the click.
• Changing chords too late. Start the change on beat 4, while your hand comes back up. A slightly messy chord on beat 1 is better than a gap in the rhythm.
• Strumming too hard. A clear but relaxed strum sounds better than a heavy one. Keep your wrist loose.

You’ve got it when…

• you can play four bars of G at 80 without a single late strum;
• you switch between G and C without breaking the rhythm;
• you feel your hand swing back up between strums without thinking about it.

Next, move on to the pendulum: that upswing finally gets to hit the strings.