Learning Guitar:
Incorporate upstrokes in rhythmic playing

By Tony Das Published on: Wed Mar 30, 2022

Upstrokes unlock the skill to play rhythmic patterns at twice the speed. We’ll be using the returning motion (from one downstroke to the start of the next) to play an upstroke. Set the metronome to four beats, count -1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and-. The places where we added the ‘and’ is where you need to play an upstroke.

Tony Das from Demoz School of Music

A celebrated guitarist who has performed with well-known bands for two decades, your teacher is a professional musician who has played at some of the biggest music festivals in India, and toured the UK and the Gulf as well. As a guitarist, bassist and singer, he has worked on several film scores and movie songs.

This blog post focuses on expanding your training in rhythm. While you’re familiar with upstroke for playing single notes, we’ll now incorporate it in rhythmic playing. What this unlocks for you essentially is the skill to play rhythmic patterns at twice the speed.

The Upstroke Technique

We’ll basically be using the returning motion (from one downstroke to the start of the next) to play an upstroke. Apart from the advantage of bringing efficiency into your strokes, upstrokes give you a different sound when you strike the strings from high to low, and this perfectly complements the sound produced when you strike from low to high (downstroke).

Choice of Guitar Pick

A pro tip here is with regards to your choice of plectrum or guitar pick – when you’re playing single notes, it’s useful to have a slightly heavier pick for precision and clarity as it doesn’t bend as much. However, for rhythm guitar playing, a thinner pick helps soften your attack on the strings and produce better sounds and a nice tone. It also adds a unique flicking sound which gives a percussive quality to your music.

Incorporating Upstrokes

Now we’ll start by playing only downstrokes, and then proceed to play them at twice the speed. When you do this, play every alternate downstroke slightly softer than the first stroke. So, you get a sort of -loud-soft-loud-soft- pattern. This was to emulate what happens when you include upstrokes. Now go ahead and replace those soft downstrokes with upstrokes. It should sound nice – natural and flowing.

Practising with a Metronome

To improve your technique and timing further, use a metronome to synchronise your down and upstrokes. Count the second stroke as a space between the clicks, so it goes -1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and-. Set the metronome to four beats for this exercise. The places where we added the ‘and’ is where you need to play an upstroke.

As usual, start with a slower beats per minute on the metronome and speed it up as you get more comfortable. Upstrokes will allow you to play more interesting and complicated patterns and rhythms in later blog posts. Keep reading and continue your journey to master playing the guitar.