Welcome to Jazz-School

I've always been surprised that I might be the only textbook author who points out in his publications that downstrokes and upstrokes must be treated differently when strumming. The reason for this is that (unlike fingerpicking) it always takes a certain, albeit short, time until all the desired strings have been struck. And then the question arises as to which string should mark the point that is meant rhythmically. And that's often not the bass note, because in many rhythms, it's the melody note of your chords that you should concentrate on. You reach this last on the downstroke and first on the upstroke, which means that downstrokes have to start relatively "too early" to reach the melody note in time. With upstrokes, the strings following the melody note have to be played "too late". Many people try to reduce the time it takes to strum the strings by playing the chords particularly quickly and with a powerful impulse. But that sounds unrelaxed. It's worth taking a closer look at upstrokes and downstrokes and the associated conditions. In addition to the usual videos in which I show you what's being played, I've created waveform analyses for this lesson that also visually show you exactly what's happening and why.