7 COOL STRUMMING PATTERNS from 1 Rhythm - How to Make Your Strumming Patterns Sound Better

hey guitar enthusiast lauren bateman here and in this lesson video we're going to go over ways to make your strumming sound so much cooler even if you're just a beginner now i get asked the question all the time lauren how do i make my strumming sound cooler i feel like i'm playing the same thing over and over again and when you strum you always sound so much better than i do so like what can i do to sound more like you versus like nails on a chalkboard so that's what i'm going to go over in this lesson video i'm going to give you some tips on how we can make your strumming sound a little bit better i'm going to give you some strumming examples so let's get started if you're looking for some more technique type stuff i do have another video i posted on getting into technique of how to make your strum sound cooler but these are actually strumming patterns but i will give you one tip from that video which is relaxing your strumming hand okay a lot of people this sometimes is like the number one way to just make your strum sound better because a lot of people i'm just going to put a very simple strumming pattern up here it's an eighth note strumming pattern one and two and three and four n down up down up down up down up okay um most people they'll play that strumming pattern like this now when you're a beginner i mean that's how it sounds it sounds pretty horrible because your hand is so stiff and there's no flexibility in your wrist so i tell people relax the wrist and glide over the strings this see how much better it already sounds i'm just relaxing my wrist and letting the pick glide along the strings all right so that's step number one try and relax your wrist instead of because if you dig in you're going to pop the strings and if you find that really hard i tell students go from a thicker pick to maybe a lighter pick and it will take some of the edge off but that's tip number one just relaxing the strumming hand already makes my guitar sound way better so a lot of being a good strummer is relaxation so keep that in mind so we're going to stick with this strumming pattern this eighth note strumming pattern and i'm going to show you how to take almost pretty much the same exact strumming pattern and make it sound different in cool ways so let's get into that so often the thing that separates beginner guitar players for more intermediate and advanced guitar players is the use of dynamics how loud and how soft we play something in music we call this an accent it looks like a little carrot so you'll see me putting some of those above the rhythms over there and an accent just means play this part louder and then play the other stuff a little bit softer so if i take that first strumming pattern all right we'll just use a g chord we'll use a simple g chord for this and i'm going to play that first strumming pattern with the relaxed pick right so it's just one and two and three and four and down up down up down up down up one and two and three and four down up down up down up down up and that's what most people do and they do that for the entire song and you know after you go through a couple chord progressions it starts sounding pretty boring so what i'm going to have you do is i'm going to introduce a couple accents on this rhythm to spice it up so i want what i'm going to do you'll see up here i'm going to put that little carrot that little accent above the second beat and above the fourth beat now why would we do that because whenever you listen to music if you have a drummer playing in the background the snare drum is usually on the two and the four so it adds a little bit of a percussive element to your rhythm playing so i'm going to take that same strumming pattern i'm going to play it through twice without the accents and then i'm going to add the accents in so that you guys can hear the difference ready so here it is without the accents one and two and three and four and one and two ready accent four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four already sounds much cooler right very i mean all we did was just add a little loudness to our strumming and it made it sound completely different now if i played a little bit faster it'll sound like this so you can hear that one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four it gives a little bit of a drive to your strumming pattern so now we've taken this really boring one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four [Music] you just feel like you can groove with it so much more and it adds so much and it's the same exact strumming pattern all we did was just add a couple accents so though this is a really good example of how you can take the same strumming pattern add a little dynamics to it and make it sound so much cooler hey guys i hope you're enjoying the video so far we're going to do a lot more examples here real quick if you haven't subscribed to my channel make sure to do so turn those notifications on so that you know when i release more videos just like this one let's get into the next example now i'm going to take that same exact strumming pattern that i just did in the last one i'm going to show you something that i call the karate chop all right so we're still going to be accenting two and four same exact strumming pattern all right so this is what it sounds like without the karate chop and then i'm going to play the karate chop so it's going to be one and two and three and four and one and two and they're ready oh now you're really using your guitar as a drum it's super cool um i think i have a tutorial there's a lots of songs do this is a very very common strumming pattern what was the song maggie may rod stewart maggie may i actually do this in that tutorial but what it is is i'm literally karate chopping my guitar i'm hitting it pretty much with the pinky and the palm side of my hand and you're not going to break your guitar like you can really whack it don't go soft but my hand is so loose that my pinky whacks off the body of my guitar and i'm an acoustic guitar so you can't really do this unless you have a hollow body guitar because the holoness creates a drum so now we've gone from the first strumming pattern of one and two and three and four and one and two to the accented version one and two and three and four and one and two and now the karate chop version ready [Music] so there you go you just did three different strumming patterns with the same rhythm what does that tell you there's only so much rhythm we can do on an instrument you know and usually there's ones that you do use over and over but adding in some of these dynamics can really open up your playing all right and make you sound a little bit more professional these are really the things that like i said separate the beginners for from kind of like the more intermediate style players so those are just three examples with that same strumming pattern i'm going to show you another strumming pattern now where we're just accenting on the third beat okay it's gonna sound very different than what we were doing before and here it is [Music] ready [Music] so you're saying lauren that really doesn't sound like much but let's put a chord progression behind this let's play g e minor c d and see what it sounds like so we've got one two three four one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four one and two and three and four and one and two and three hear that very different from the first one we were doing so here's the first one one and two and three and four and one and two and three and now second one and two and [Music] very different feel again same exact strumming pattern we just changed where we put the accent all right so that's another example of one of these accented and dynamic rhythms that you can work on so i'm going to show you another accented rhythm but i want to touch upon something that can really make a big difference in your strumming and sounding like a beginner and sounding really good so a lot of times when we're strumming we don't always catch every single string every single time when we're doing down strums we would probably catch most of the strings but the up strums we don't if you strum all the strings don't do that okay or if you are no you don't strum all the strings on the up strum but what if on the down strums we didn't strum all the strings either what if we kept our strumming to the bottom three or four strings all right and what i'm going to do we're going to accent the first beat so we're going to accent the one and keep everything else very small all right so here we go it's gonna be one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four sounds not like much over just a g chord let's put it behind that chord progression again all right g e minor c d here we go one two three four one [Laughter] so you can hear by only hitting these lower strings the bass note of that chord is ringing out much longer you can hear it's just going to start ringing so it gives a really really good little accent on that first beat very different from the third beat so here's one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four i almost feel like i like the third beat accent better than the first beat but i want to give you another example to talk about that hey guys i hope you enjoyed this video don't forget to give me a thumbs up as it helps show my youtube videos to more students just like you now this concept we just talked about works very well on chords that run over two measures okay so a lot of times in songs you'll have chords where they're four beats one two three four one two three four and every just like in all the examples i'm showing you we change the chord every four beats well sometimes you're going to get songs that have chords for two measures so you would play like a g chord one two three four one two three four okay so what you can do is you can just accent the one on the first measure and then keep the rest of the measure very condensed with that little strumming and it'll sound like this ready one two three four one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and round and two and [Music] in that example i think that's where accenting on the first beat really really stands out and it makes the song sound really cool it actually opens the song up a lot versus just right instead of just doing that now we're doing much better right [Applause] very very different feel so play around with that you don't have to strum every single string every single time that's not how strumming works and the very last thing that i want to touch upon and i think this is very important is crescendos okay now what is a crescendo in music that's when we go from something very small to very loud so we go soft too loud and i think crescendos are very great ways to either go from a verse into a chorus or come out of a chorus into a verse all right usually it's you're building from something light and fluffy to something energetic okay so how would i use that let's go back to my chord progression with the g e minor cd okay so it's going to be um i'll use that that one i just used actually okay with the accent on the one and what i'm gonna do when i get to this d chord at the end listen the first measure i'm going to play the accented one but i'm going to crescendo on the second measure lauren this sounds weird let me show you ready here it is we got one and two and three and four and one and two three and four and one and two and three [Music] ah so what did i do i switched from down up strumming to all downs so i accented one and two and three and four and when i got to that second measure i went all down still eighth notes but all downs i went started slow so i went from strumming very few strings this also helps make it sound bigger very few strings to all of a sudden strumming all the so strings see how that build it's called a crescendo in music and it's a great way to add a lot of emotion to your strumming and playing particularly when you might be going from a very even kilted verse into a very very energetic chorus so those are just a few examples of ways to make your guitar strumming more expressive i do a lot of this in my guitar strumming course i'll put a link in the description below and of course i'll give you guys a special discount for being youtube viewers but what i do with students when we learn rhythm is we just learn as many strumming patterns as possible because rhythm is very fluid and eventually what we want to happen to this strumming hand is we want it to go on automatic pilot usually when you learn a song or you play music you don't usually use the same strumming pattern for the entire song there is a lot of improvisation that happens but you don't really get there to that point until you start feeling the music so if you're if you're focused on the strumming pattern has to be this for the entire song or it's wrong that's not right listen to your favorite artists they do a lot of improvisation in their rhythm especially when they're strumming a lot or very very fast there's a lot of changes that happen so don't focus on whether the rhythm is right and wrong it's better to be in time than to be playing the same rhythm strictly every time so experiment a bit with some of these throw them into some of your favorite songs the more you experiment the more fluid your rhythm will become and that's what rhythm and timing is all about so i hope you guys get to that automatic pilot very very soon if you're interested in checking out that course again i'll put a link in the description below for you guys to go check that out youtube's going to pop over a few more videos over here make sure to go and check those out there might be something else there that interests you and i hope to see you guys in another lesson video

Channel: Lauren Bateman

Views: 801,808

Keywords: lauren bateman guitar lessons, lauren bateman, how to make your strumming patterns sound better, how to make your strumming sound better, how to make your strumming sound cooler, better sounding strumming, expressive strumming, how to make your strumming sound good, how to strum like a pro, why does my strumming sound bad, how to make your strumming sound cool, strumming tips, how to improve your guitar strumming, how to strum a guitar, acoustic guitar strumming, guitar, strumming

Id: B5Jq50pEAfc

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021