Strumming patterns are different ways you can strum chords rhythmically on your guitar to bring life to your music and your chord changes. Here is a big list of strumming patterns every beginner guitarist should practice. You might not use all of these but being familiar with them can also help you when the time comes to create your own. Read my article on How to play guitar chords if you are new to strumming chords.
Before I get to the list of strumming patterns I want to give you a brief overview of the rhythm notation I used for the charts. All the patterns are written in 4/4 time which means there are 4 beats to a bar and a quarter note gets the beat.
Most of the patterns listed below will have alternating down and up stroke strums. So to get ready for those I want to show you the difference between a pattern with all downward strums on each beat and a pattern with alternating down and up strums on each beat. Practice these patterns before moving on to the rest of them to ensure you have good down and up strum coordination.
How To Figure Out Strumming Patterns
1. At first, try playing a single chord over all beats until you have mastered the patterns ( try with a C chord first). Then gradually substitute different chords in over each beat. Try the I IV IV vii chords of a key for example C, F, G and A chords. Get more keys in my 4 chord songs lesson.
2. Strum over the sound hole on an acoustic guitar or over the pickups on an electric guitar making sure all strings of each chord ring clearly.
3. Your strum arm should act as a fulcrum to evenly strum up or down strokes as smooth and as possible in both directions.
Strumming Patterns By Level Up Guitar Lessons
When the creative urge hits, you can use the blank rhythm staff below to write down strumming patterns you create. Just print out the image of the staff or copy it and paste it a few times into your favorite image editor to make a longer printable sheet.But don’t worry! With the right technique and some focused practice, strumming a guitar will become as easy and effortless as riding a bike.
Next, I’ll show you a step-by-step plan to learn a new strumming pattern, that helps you tap into your innate sense of rhythm. After all, is all about developing your musicality!
We’ll then explore 7 popular strum patterns, from easy to more advanced, all with song examples, so you can hear what they sound like in ‘real music’.
Easy Guitar Strumming Patterns From Well Known Songs
Keep your strumming hand moving at all times, even when you’re not hitting any strings for a couple of beats. By doing this, you don’t have to think about when you need to move your strumming hand: it’s moving all the time. Constantly moving your hand also makes it much easier to keep time. We’ll take a closer look at how this works later in this guide.
Most of the movement will come from rotating your lower arm (you could also say: twisting your wrist) and letting your hand and wrist hang loose and follow that motion. (Funk guitarist Ross Bolton calls this a ‘drunken wrist’. I like that.)
You might be tempted to make the up and down movement with your lower part of your arm (your forearm), but though your lower arm will be moving up and down a little bit as well, that’s only a small part of the movement.
Blues Guitar Lessons • Rhythm Guitar Strum Patterns • Part One • Chords, Tab, Video Lessons
It’s totally normal to want to hold on to the pick tightly, because you don’t want it to move and you don’t want to drop it. But by gripping it too tight, you make it hard for the pick to move past the strings smoothly and it might get caught up in there somewhere. Also: it’s really hard to keep your wrist nice and loose when your gripping your pick tightly. By holding your pick with a light grip, you allow it to glide over the strings easily.
If you’re not used to playing with a pick, it can really help to practice with a thin pick that’s nice and bendy. As you progress, try thicker picks too though, as they’ll give you a bit more control over your sound.
You might think we need to hit all the notes in a chord with every strum, but very often we hit just three or four strings.
How To Play Guitar: Strumming Patterns Lesson 1
So which strings should you be hitting? A good rule of thumb is to hit either all of the strings or just the lower (thicker) strings on every downstrum. Then on the upstrum, hit only the highest (thinnest) three or four strings. This approach will make the downstrums sound a bit heaver and give your upstrums a bit of a lighter sound. And: it’ll be a little easier to play!
When you hear a great song, you’ll often start tapping your foot or nodding your head to the music without even realising it.
The rhythm is just so catchy or compelling that you can’t help but feel it throughout your body. This is your innate sense of rhythm kicking in.
Sixteenth Note Strumming Patterns, Pt. 1
When you’re strumming, you want to tap into that innate sense of rhythm as well. That’s what will make strumming feel easy and natural.
Experienced musicians do this automatically. It’s why they’ll say things like ‘just play what you feel’ or ‘I never think about strumming, I just do it’. Of course, once upon a time, strumming was hard for them too! It’s just too long ago for them to remember.
Strumming is a lot like riding a bike in that way. It takes a bunch of practice at first, but once things click, it feels like the easiest thing in the world.
Essential Guitar Strumming Technique
So, how exactly do you go about using your natural sense of rhythm to strum a guitar? Let’s take a look at how you should learn a strum pattern, step by step!
Before we get going, check out this quick video from my course Strumming Skills Bootcamp which has a quick explanation of how rhythm works. (Naturally, the course is included in your membership if you're a All Access Member!)
As you can see, we need to strum on each beat. So, how exactly would we get rhythm like this into our system?
A 6:8 Strumming Pattern
Strumming patterns involve strumming down and strumming up. Now, while it’s important to get this right, many players get a little caught up in the mechanics of when your strumming hand needs to go up or down. It makes them lose the connection with their natural sense of rhythm.
It’s impossible to play a rhythm without hearing what it should sound like in your head. So before you even touch your guitar and before we look at the downstrums and upstrums, we want to get the rhythm in our system. You want to be able to imagine in your mind what the strumming rhythm sounds like. You want to hear it in your head.
A great way to check if you really ‘know’ the rhythm is to sing, hum, beatbox, tap or say it out loud. In other words: say it before you play it. ‘Cause if you can’t do that, playing a solid strumming groove on guitar will be impossible.
Guitar Strumming Tips
Once you have the strumming rhythm in your mind, it’s time to start playing it. Now, when you’re learning something new, you want to focus on one thing at a time. So, you don’t want to focus on playing your new strum pattern
Instead, you want to play the strum rhythm on just one chord. This allows you to devote all your attention to the strumming. Below is a quick ‘one chord song’ from Strumming Skills Bootcamp, completely played on a G chord. So grab that chord and play along!
Once you’re comfortable playing the strum rhythm on one chord, it’s time to try it out in a real song! The challenge here is to keep that strumming pattern going while you switch between chords too.
Beginner Strumming For Easy Improvement
This tune by Lee Hazlewood uses our ‘strum on each beat’ strum pattern, while also switching between a few chords. See if you can play along with it! When you play the video, the right chords will automatically light up, so you know where you’re supposed to be.
(Sidenote: I've simplified the chords a little bit. But if you want the 'fancy' version which includes the Dmaj7 chord, flick the toggle to the top right of the chord progression!)
The course is totally included in your membership if you're a All Access Member. If you’re not a member, you can check out the first couple of lessons of the course for free. Check it out!
Fun Strumming Patterns To Spice Up Your Rhythm Guitar
Time to check out our 7 strum patterns! We’ll start off with some basic patterns and slowly make things more challenging. Each pattern comes with one or two song examples so you can hear what it sounds like in a ‘real' song.
When strumming a guitar, you’ll use both downstrums (i.e. where your strumming hand moves down) and upstrums (where your strumming hand moves back up). There’s a
0 Response to "Guitar Strumming Patterns Lessons"
Posting Komentar