Hey Friend,
Morning…
We’re going to be quick today with the exercises. That’s mainly because I don’t have a lot of references to pull from in Rock where you’re going to use upstrokes in much besides strumming.
Here are the exercise files:
Honestly, when you’re strumming chords, the upstroke is not usually accented in Rock.
You’re playing the higher-pitched strings, which can clash with vocals and other instruments in the same frequency range, making them hard to hear.
Those upstroke riffs tend to be accents to the song rhythm. You hear them a lot in Reggae music, the strum being on the off-beat, or the “and,” as in the "1-and-2-and-3-and-4.”
That said, it’s still good practice to isolate your picking so you make sure each note is clearly played.
For a song, I tabbed the intro chord progression for “ Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind. The tabs show you how the play the riff.
However, the MP3 of the exercise has a slight delay between the second and third beat, so use the song video to get the feel for the rhythm and timing.
No Doubt has a number of songs that use this Reggae feel with the chords played on the “and,” but as I watched multiple videos, I saw that Tom Dumont was playing downstrokes, so I didn’t want to confuse things.
Their early style of music is called Ska, incorporating a Reggae feel along with horns and Rock/Punk aspects.
Anyway, hope you’re weekend is going well. Enjoy!
Peace~
Dave
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