John Kavanagh || Unique Strum Instruction

John had left YT notes that are helpful to explain this strum...

You're always alternating down and up strokes, so it stays smooth, and you can get it going quite quick without much effort. It's mostly fingers and wrist, little or no arm movement. The less you move, the faster you'll be able to do once it's down.

The second version is the more lilting syncopated one, and it's turned around. It's for a more swingy, triplets or dotted notes feel. It's finger up first, BEFORE the beat, then thumb down, then finger(s) brush up-down. It sounds like it's backwards, but it's really almost the same move, with the beat turned around - well, the thumb is still on "one" if you're counting. I think of it as "ba-ding-ka-ching". "Ba"(finger up, before the beat) "ding" (thumb down) "Ka-ching" (brush UP-DOWN).

I think of the rhythm as "bump-a-chik-a." "Bump" (thumb) "a" (finger) "Chik-a" (brush down-up with fingers). It's straight 8s. To get the Iz-style light reggae feel, it's mostly just that you emphasize the "Chik": "bump-a-CHIK-a."

It confused some one that I refer to the "top" string. I mean the one highest in pitch, nearest the floor. For me, the low or bottom string is the thick one nearest the ceiling (I use a low 4th) and the first, high, or top one is the thin one near the floor. When I say "high" and "low" strings, I mean pitch, not geometry.

In the close-ups I play two versions of the strum. The first is thumb down (on 1 string), finger up (on 1 string), then brush down-up (all strings) with finger(s).