There are many differences between spanish music and flamenco. While flamenco was born inside of Spain, it is only native to the region of Andalusia. The techniques are somewhat alike, but flamenco includes many genres and Spanish guitar lessons often include subtle aspects of flamenco and other styles.

These are the most well-known but the truth is there are many regional folk styles just like Andalusian music(flamenco), each with their own flavors and characters. The region of Aragon is characterized by a dense percussive element and the main instruments are castanets, guitar, tambourines and bandurria.

The regions of Asturias, Galicia and Cantabria have a distinct tradition which bears a powerful Celtic stamp. The signature instrument is the gaita, an instrument similar to the classic bagpipe of Scotland. Castille, Madrid and Leon is a large region that has been marked by numerous sources: Portuguese, Roman, Gypsy, Moor and others.

In other words spanish guitar lessons often refer to a very general style, while spanish music is much more complex and branched than it is believed.

Several guitar strumming techniques are available, but you should develop your own style. If you look at Al Di Meola, John Mclaughlin, Eric Clapton and other guitar masters you will notice they all have their own style. The easiest part to personalise is your strumming technique as it doesn’t have to be precise, and it doesn’t have to copy what is written in the rhythm pattern.

For the rhythm pattern there are a few good ways to remember it. First of all you should always tap your foot to keep the rhythm while you’re playing. When you have a bit more experience with that you can even tap the main beats a little bit harder than the others. Another method is to clap your hands, but this will keep you from playing while doing it. So I recommend tapping your foot at all times.

The most important skill you need to acquire is a technique I call counter-rhythm, which is basically tapping your foot and playing the counter measures of the main beats. Most guitar players change the tapping of their foot to adjust to the new rhythm, but this is a mistake.

A few standard guitar strumming techniques are the simple brush-type up and down movement meant to play the whole chord in one slice, the rasgueado(the typical flamenco technique) and something I call the ‘trio’, which means doing a fast up-down-up or down-up-down motion on all the strings, creating a galloping effect to add flavour to the rhythm.

But how do they do it? If you look at the great Al Di Meola or Paco de Lucia, Eric Clapton and so many others they never miss a beat, and they always flourish the song so that it gives us a feeling relevant to what they’re playing.

I can go about the different guitar strumming lessons in several ways.The first distinction is whether we use a pick or our fingers.

The pick is mostly used by electric and jazz guitar players. With a pick the motion is simple, either up-down or the other way around. A couple things to keep in mind: try not to keep your hand on the guitar body when playing rhythms, this will make your movement difficult and you will not be able to keep up when accelerating; you should keep your hand together as a fist, holding the pick between your thumb and index fingers.

Finger picking is mostly used by classical and flamenco guitar players. The right hand technique of the flamenco music is far more complex than it’s classical counterpart.

A common technique to both styles is using your hand as you would a pick, keeping it together as a fist and using the thumb and index fingers to brush the strings, creating the desired rhythm.

The most important flamenco rhythm technique is the rasguedo. And there are 2 broad ways to do it. Either by using your 4 fingers(except the thumb) one at a time to produce a galloping sound, usually starting with the pinky and finishing with the index finger, or by using a circular motion with the thumb and middle finger for a faster, but less powerful effect. Another techniques involves using your index finger going up-down to create the rhythm and another finger to hit the guitar case. This is a much harder technique to master.

I hope these guitar strumming lessons will help you improve and broaden your guitar playing.