need help on strumming

Believe it or not, strumming is something that is so simple it's hard for beginners. Keeping your right hand fluid and the wrist relaxed while moving your left hand for chord changes can be a challenge in the beginning.

The first rule of strumming is: do NOT interrupt your strumming. Once you internalize the rhythm of the song either by tapping your foot or whatever, transfer it into your strumming hand and do NOT interrupt it - at all costs. =) Pretend you're a drummer and you're maintaining the beat with that hand.

Here is the tricky part: keep your strumming hand fluid and moving to the beat EVEN IF you screw up the chord changes with your other hand. This is critical for beginners. Training your brain to not 'lock up' or choke both hands when the chords change is important. You'd be surprised how often you'll do this without even knowing it.

A good exercise to start off with is to mute the strings with the chord hand and then perform basic strumming patterns over them. Sounds boring, but the next phase is to continue this and then >bam< insert a chord with your left hand. Then go back to muting all the strings and >bam< try another chord. Remember to NEVER stop the rhythm with the strumming hand. Hold the chords and release them ON TEMPO and hold them for a few measures initially. Use the chords from the song you're trying to learn to get good at them.

Once you get this down, you can try to chain together the chords in a row and skip muting the strings between each chord, then ultimately try to change them in middle of the measures. But don't do this too soon and definitely not before you can keep that strumming hand moving fluidly without choking on the changes. Get it?

Try this at first using the common "DOWN-up, up-DOWN-up, up-DOWN-up etc." pattern with the strumming hand. Strum a tad harder on the strings on the down strokes only. Hit the strings softer on the lowercase "up's". I recommend simply doing this for a bit so you can internalize it.

Broken down this pattern translates into:
strum DOWN and hit the strings,
strum UP and hit the strings,
strum DOWN AND DON'T HIT ANY STRING ALL (important, don't skip this motion),
strum UP and hit the string,
strum DOWN and hit the strings,
strum UP and hit the strings

After that the cycle repeats, but it repeats starting with the "empty" DOWN stroke where you don't hit any strings. It doesn't repeat from the very beginning.

Ok, hope that helps you. Apologies if some of this info you already knew... =)

Strumming is as simple as clapping. You should not have a problem with strumming as long as you can clap in rhythm. If you really want to get a hold on your strumming, stop thinking about it while you re doin it. Done think about upstroke and down stroke. Just flow with the rhythm on the song. After some time you will slowly start getting hold on it. Practice alot.