Everything You Need To Know About Strumming Patterns (Beginner's Masterclass)

one of the biggest hurdles that beginners face when learning guitar is learning strumming patterns and then once a beginner has learned one or two or three strumming patterns it's really hard to break free of just playing those few patterns over and over again in this masterclass I'm gonna really break down what a strumming pattern is how they're constructed how they work with rhythm and chord progressions and songs and how you can actually create your own this information will be the foundation for almost everything you do on the guitar and will allow you to play more advanced rhythms much quicker than most guitarists can the first thing you need to understand are quarter notes in most western music the quarter note is the pulse of the song and what you tap your foot to the most common time signature in western music is 4/4 which is also known as common time and that means that there's 4 beats per bar and the quarter note gets the beat so if we just look at a simple piece of notation if you look here that 4/4 represents the time signature that can be a different time signature but like I said the majority of western music is in 4/4 which is why it's called common time and like I said the top number represents that there are 4 beats per bar and the bottom number represents what note gets the beat and in 4/4 time the quarter note gets the beat so that's what the 4 represents on the bottom and then what I have drawn out here are just all quarter notes so that would mean that there's 4 quarter notes per bar because there's 4 beats per bar and the quarter note gets the beat this could be other note values there could be smaller note values or it could be bigger note values and then that would change how many notes are in each bar but it was still equal the same amount of time as for quarter notes equal I'm just showing a really simple representation for now and I'll explain why I'm even showing this as we go forward and how this relates to strumming so you can see I have four quarter notes together and they're together in what's called a bar so what's a line there is a bar here's another bar here's another bar here's another bar and bars are also called measures and I've just chosen a random number of four bars I could show you a hundred bars I could show you ten bars it doesn't matter this is just to show you a representation of how quarter notes work in music and the reason I have four bars is because coming up I'm going to show you a chord progression that actually lasts four bars and how to strum patterns with it so that's why I'm showing four bars there's nothing special about four bars and these vertical lines are what are called the bar line so that separates each bar from one another so you can see a group of four quarter notes then a bar line a group of four quarter notes a bar line and so on but we're gonna keep it really simple this is what its gonna look like when we're talking about strumming patterns so each of these boxes is representing a bar and the four-four obviously is the same that's representing four four time common time but this whole course is gonna be in 4/4 time so even if it doesn't show a 4/4 you'll know that you're still in 4/4 in this course because that's all I'm talking about for now so we're gonna start off and we're just gonna take a basic Imai 'nor chord because it's a fairly simple chord to hold and we're going to use this to start learning strumming patterns [Music] so now I've written a minor at the top of the first bar and that means we're gonna play E minor through all the bars when we actually play multiple bars but if we were gonna play this Imai nerf or quarter notes we would strum down four times and each of those strums would represent a quarter note [Music] and then if we wanted to repeat that for four bars we would strum down four times per bar which would give us a total of 16 strums [Music] and the important thing to understand is that you need to keep the quarter notes evenly spaced and I'm gonna talk more about this and actually explain how you do it and how to do it with a metronome or a backing track but for now just realize that each of those strums is evenly spaced within the bar and they're evenly spaced in between bars so once I get to the four strum of the first bar this spacing between the four strum of the first bar and the first drama of the second bar is the same spacing as all the other strums and it's important to understand that 4/4 time or strumming quarter notes doesn't have anything to do with tempo I could strum this really slowly at a slow tempo [Music] or I could strum it really fast at a fast tempo but I'd still be strumming for quarter notes in 4/4 time so that means there's four strums per bar it's just how quickly we go through the bars is determined by the tempo but even when we speed up the space in between each of the strums need to stay the same with each other so these are the foundation for everything you're gonna do when you're strumming is quarter notes you need to always understand where your quarter notes are when you're strumming and in 4/4 time it's so important because that's the pulse of the song that's where you're tapping your foot that's how you keep good time and that's how you always know where you are within a bar within a piece of music when playing with other musicians wouldn't playing with the backing track that quarter note tells you where you are and helps you keep your time and then we build from there but everything is still based on understanding where those quarter notes are so it's also important to count when you're playing or at least count in your head to know where you are at all times and counting quarter notes is really easy because it's just one two three four that's it so when you strum down you count one when you strum down the next time you count two next time 3 next time four and then you would just repeat that 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 and so on through all of however many bars there are [Music] to three fine [Music] so the next important thing to understand and to start practicing early on is tapping your foot along with these strums so every time you strum down on a quarter note you should be tapping your foot so as your hand goes down and strums through the strings your foot goes down and taps the floor this will really help you keep your time and especially help you keep time and know where you are at all times when you're playing more complicated strumming patterns so your hand goes down your foot goes down your hand comes up your foot comes up so once you get it down it's really easy to tap just quarter notes it gets more complicated when you start adding in other note values but like I said start practicing it now because it'll help so much as you get into other types of starting powders that are more advanced and another thing to be aware of is that you want to keep your hand moving smoothly the whole time you don't strum down brush your hand up strum down pause rush your hand up or anything like that keep it moving smoothly down smoothly up all trying to keep everything evenly paced so now we're going to take four bars of music and instead of just playing a minor the whole time we're actually going to play a chord progression and the chord progression we're gonna play is G D E minor seven C ad 9 which is a really common chord progression so for the first bar we're playing a G chord [Music] for the second bar were playing a D chord for the third bar we're playing an E minor 7 chord [Music] and for the fourth bar were playing a C ad 9 chord [Music] so something that I want you to be aware of when I'm playing the chord progression and it's a good way for you to play it as well each time I play the chord progression I'm gonna play it one time through which is four bars but I'm always gonna end back on the G chord which would be the first bar starting over so that's so the chord progression sounds resolved if I don't do that it would just sound up in the air also that's where you would start over if you wanted to repeat these bars over and over again because you can play these one time through four bars of it but then you can just keep repeating by starting back over on the G chord and then like I said just repeating over and over as many times as you want and then when you're ready to end just hit the G chord one more time to end and you'll see me doing that each time I play the chord progression I'll play it one time through and I'll in on the G but if I wanted to keep playing I could just keep playing that G the same way that I played it the first time and then just keep going through until I wanted to end and then I would just strum the G one time to end so that's just something to be aware of as you're going through this and as you're practicing yourself and like I said this is a really popular chord progression which is why I chose this chord progression and I chose these specific chords with these specific voicings because they sound good together but they're also easier to play if you can play chord progressions if you can play chords already obviously if you've never played chord progressions if you still struggle with core transitions this is going to be difficult but once you get it down you'll find that it's a fairly easy progression to play with fairly easy transitions and this isn't a lesson about chord progressions or making transitions or any of that but I'm quickly going to show you how you can make the transitions in the easiest way in case you need to practice that so all of these chords share the note that's on the second string third fret under your third finger so you're gonna leave that finger down the whole time and just move your other fingers so after you play the G chord leave your third finger down and remove your first second and fourth fingers and place your first and second fingers where they go for the D chord then again when transition into the e minor seven chord leave your third finger down and move your first and second fingers where they go for the e minor seventh chord then again the same thing when transitioning to the C at nine leave your third finger down move your first and second fingers where they go for the C at nine then for the last transition from C at nine to G it's really easy because they're really similar shapes so you leave your third finger down still move your first and second finger up towards the ceiling to the fifth and six strings within the same frets and place your fourth finger back down where it goes on the first string so now what is take these four bars of music with this chord progression like I said it's G major for the first bar D major for the second E minor for the third in C at nine for the fourth and we're still just gonna play quarter notes so that means we're gonna play four strums per chord which is four strums per bar still and we're just gonna strum all down strums because we're always strumming down strums on the quarter note and just be aware when you count this it's still one two three four one two three four so one two three four over the G one two three four over the D and so on and every time you strum every time your hand goes down your foot goes down and taps every time your hand comes up your foot comes up [Music] so the next big step which is a really big step is learning how to actually play in time everything we've done so far we're kind of playing in time because we're trying to keep everything evenly spaced but to really play in time to really practice it you need to practice with the metronome or with the backing track and so I'm gonna explain how to do that starting with the metronome and then I'm gonna teach you how to do it with the backing track so like I said the first step is understanding how to do this with a metronome and a metronome is just a device if you don't know that just keeps constant time you can choose how fast it goes based on what are called beats per minute so it's just like in time there's 60 seconds per minute if you're playing at 60 beats per minute that means there's 60 if you're playing strums 60 strums per minute and then you can go slower you can go a lot faster than that but we're gonna keep everything at a fairly slow tempo for now around 60 beats per minute so there's countless types of metronomes you can use those countless apps you can use on your phone or on your desktop or you can buy actual analog metronomes it doesn't matter you just need a basic metronome that's going to keep basic time and you can change the tempo which like I said are the beats per minute so if we were to look at this chord progression still looking at quarter notes I'm gonna let it play through with the metronome set at 60 beats per minute and every time the metronome clicks you're gonna see one of the strums highlighted starting with the first strum all the way through the whole chord progression so you can see that when the metronome clicks that's when you would strum down that's when you would count your 1 2 3 or 4 so here we go here's a metronome set at 60 beats per minute so now I'm going to actually play along with that so along with that metronome clicking I'm gonna actually strum along to it here's an example of that [Music] [Music] and then if I want to speed it up just to show you I can speed it up I'll speed it up to 90 beats per minute and play along with it just so you can see everything's still evenly spaced the metronome is still clicking on the quarter notes the one-two-three-four which are the down strums which is where it had my foot is just now I'm playing through faster because the tempo is faster [Music] so playing with the metronome is good it's really good to practice but it's also important to be able to practice with something that's more musical because when you're playing with other musicians or in real-life situations you're not just playing to a clique you're playing to a drumbeat usually so I've created a basic beat jam track which is just a really simple rock beat so not only does this give you more of a real-world feel for playing it's also more fun to play along with than just a metronome so first I'm gonna play the backing track just so you can hear it just for a little bit and then I'm gonna break down what's actually going on so if we're to look at this chord progression with the four strums per chord which is four strums per bar which are all quarter notes with the actual backing track if you listen the kicks or on the 1 and the 3 of each bar and the kick if you don't know if you look at a drum set that's actually called the kick because the foot is tapping a pedal that's hitting the bass drum and that's called the kick drum and it's a low thud and if you listen to the backing track you should be able to hear where those kicks are happening and they're on the one and three [Music] and the snare drum which is what you hit with your stick and it's a loud crack sound those happen on the twos and fours and that's really important to understand the twos and fours are what are called the backbeat and the backbeat is really strong in most popular music and that's what you would clap your hands to if you're listening to music if you're at a concert and clapping along with the band you would clap on the 2 and the 4 so now I'm gonna play the backing track again with this chord progression on the screen that's 60 beats per minute and you're gonna see the strums highlighted again the quarter note strums so really listen where that kick hits and that snare hits there's also a hi-hat in this backing track which is it but you don't really have to worry about that you can kind of just let that fade in the background for now I really want you to listen to the kick and the snare because those land on the quarter notes and especially the snare the louder crack sound because that lands on the 2 and the 4 which is the backbeat [Music] so now I'm going to demo this and play along with the backing track so you can hear it with the chord progression and here where the strums actually land within that backing track I'm going to play it at 60 beats for a minute and then I'm going to play it faster at 90 beats per minute just so you can hear it at different tempos [Music] [Music] [Music] it's really important just to be able to play those strums in time whether you're playing with the metronome or the backing track and always knowing where those drums happen and again your strumming and counting and tapping your foot which all land on the quarter notes and when you're playing with the backing track the first strum happens on the kick but you're strumming down you're tapping you're counting one that happens on a kick the second down strum the next quarter note happens on the snare the third happens on the kick and so on just repeat it over and over and drumbeats can get way more complicated than this and kind of shift things around and play different parts on different parts of the kick or leave different parts out play more complicated rhythms and it gets a lot harder to play along with unless you're used to it but this like I said is a basic rock beat that is really important to start with and lots of songs just have this basic rock beat as the foundation of the song and getting it down with this will allow you to get into more complicated rhythms with more complicated beats going so now you've gotten quarter notes down the next big step is learning how to strum eighth notes so I told you there are four quarter notes strums per bar you can probably guess by the name of it that there are eight eighth notes strums per bar and all we do is add an up strum in between each one of the quarter note down strums so those quarter notes stay in the exact same place it's just now as our hand is naturally coming up before it goes back down for the next quarter note strum we're gonna add an up strum in between so if I demo that to an E minor just for one bar here's an example of playing eighth notes and it's important to understand where those quarter notes strums are those down strums are still your quarter note but really when you're playing all down and up strums like I just demonstrated they're actually all eighth notes but it's still important to understand that each one of those down strums is where the quarter note lands and that's important to understand because it's the beat it's where you tap your foot it's the pulse of the song so again that was for one bar now we can just do it for as many bars as we want here's an example through four bars [Music] and so it's important to understand that when you play eighth notes that has nothing to do with your tempo those quarter note down strums are still in the same place no matter what it's just you're adding that up strum in between each one of the down strums and it's important again that each one of your strums is evenly spaced and the important thing to understand now is that your metronome is not clicking on each one of these strums it's still only clicking on the quarter note down strums because again that's the pulse of your song but that's where the beat lands so that metronome is gonna click on all those quarter notes strums so you'll strum down with the click of the metronome but then you strum up in between the next click and then down on the next click strum up without a click down on the next click and so on so I'm just gonna play the metronome through at 60 beats per minute just so you can see it with these strums highlighted so you can see where the metronome is actually clicking so you could see it was only clicking on the quarter note down strums which is where you would tap your foot and then if you're playing to the backing track the kick would still be on the first down strum the snare would be on the second down strum the kick of beyond the third down strum the snare would be on the fourth down strum and so on you wouldn't have the kick or the snare falling on those up strums and really it's the hi-hat in this backing track that's falling on each one of those eighth notes which is that so you can listen to the hi-hat in this situation and see that that's landing on each one of these strums so what I'm going to do I'm going to play this along to the backing track I'm going to do that 60 beats per minute then I'm gonna do it at 90 beats per minute so you can hear it at different tempos [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] now the next important thing to understand again is how to count this and those quarter notes that we counted before the one-two-three-four stay in the exact same place they stay on your quarter note down strums so that'll never change the thing that is changing is now that you have an up strum in between each one of those quarter note down strums and you need to count those as well if you're playing them and you count quarter notes one two three four when you count eighth notes you count one and two and three and four and and just keep repeating that so all of those up strums you'll count and all the down strums will still just be a number one A two A three and a four depending where you are in the bar and then you would just repeat that depending how many bars you have so one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and for as many bars as you have so I'm gonna play this again to the backing track but this time I'm going to count along [Music] so here are some things that I just want to point out now that you need to be aware of even though we've added in an extra strum the ands in between the one two three and four when we're playing these eighth notes your hand is really doing the same motion because when you're strumming just quarter notes your hand goes down but then it needs to come back up before it goes down again for the next down strum so your hand is still doing the exact same motion it's just now on the way up you actually hit some strings on the way up but whether you're playing just quarter note down strums or whether you're playing all eighth notes with down and up strums your hand should basically look the same moving smoothly everything evenly spaced your hand goes down your hand comes up and your foot is doing the exact same thing as your hand is doing so your foot goes down on the quarter note down strums and hits the floor to tap and then it comes up on the up strum so your hand and foot are directly tied together it's just like your hand is holding a string and when your hand goes down your foot goes down when your hand comes up your foot comes up you only hear a tap on the one two three four quarter notes the down strums so now we can take these four bars and instead of just playing with the e minor we can play it with the chord progression so again everything stays the exact same it's just now we've added that up strum in between each one of the down strums and now we're playing eight strums per chord which is eight strums per bar instead of just four and everything you do just keep your hand moving smoothly it's not very common for our strumming pattern just to be all down strums or to be all down and up strums what's most common is to mix it up and so you're gonna mix up quarter notes and eighth notes instead of just playing all quarter notes or just playing all eighth notes and this may sound complicated but it's actually not it's a really simple way to do this it takes time to practice it and get good at it and get all the mechanics down but the actual concept behind how to do this is really simple so when we started we had just all down strums which were all just saw in the quarter note then we had eighth note strumming which was all down in upstream so we had eight strums per bar instead of four strums per bar well now to mix up quarter notes in eighth notes so that we're not just playing all quarter notes or just playing all eighth notes we're going to remove at least one of the up strums and then we'll end up with a mix of quarter notes and eighth notes so for example I could remove this first up strum and I end up with this so in that last example I removed the first up strum I could now just remove the second up strum and I end up with this strumming pattern or instead of removing the first or the second one I could remove the third up strum and I end up with this strumming pattern or I could remove the last up strum and I end up with this pattern and removing one up strum does make a difference it does make the pattern more interesting but it gets even more interesting when you start removing more than one up strum so those I see samples just removed one of the up strums at a time I started with removing the first up strum then I removed the second and the third then the fourth but I left all the other up strums in there if you remove a combination of two up strums now let's start sounding more interesting so I could start by removing the first two up strums I end up with this pattern and then we could just go through all the combinations of removing two up strums at a time so the first time I removed the first two up strums now I can remove the first in the third and I end up with this pattern or I could remove the first and the fourth and I end up with this pattern so now we've removed all the combinations that have the first up strum removed we removed the first in the second the first two third the first and the fourth now we can remove all the combinations that have the second up strum removed besides the one that has the first in the second because we already did that so if I remove the second and the third I end up with this pattern if I remove the second and the fourth I end up with this pattern and so those are all the combinations removing the second up strum so now the last combination we have is removing the third and the fourth up strum so if we remove those we end up with this pattern so now we've gone through all the combinations of removing two of the up strums now we can remove combinations of three of the up strums and three is the most you can remove because there's only four up strums within a bar in four four times so if you remove four you're just back to all down strums again which would just be what we started with so removing three up strums if I remove the first three I end up with this pattern if I remove the first a second in the forth and up with this pattern and then we're down to the last combination that we can have which is removing the second the third and the fourth up strum and we come up with this so now we can take any of those strumming patterns and plug them into bars of music so we can take the four bars that we've been using and start with the E minor and just take any of those patterns that we went over here's one where we're just leaving the third up strum in and then we can play that for four bars of music and it would sound like this [Music] [Music] so now all of a sudden these strumming patterns are starting to sound more musical if they're starting to sound like patterns you would actually hear in a song now it's important to understand how to count these strumming patterns when it's not just all quarter notes or it's not just all eighth notes the first thing to understand is that you're always going to count your quarter notes those are so important to know where they are your quarter note down strums because that's the pulse of the music in 4/4 time that's where the beat is landing that's where you tap your foot but when you're playing a combination of quarter notes and eighth notes you only count the eighth notes that you actually strum so in this case you would only count the third up strum and so instead of counting one and two and three and four and the whole time in this situation you would count one two three and four one two three and four and so on here's a demonstration of playing this and counting along with the backing track [Music] for to [Music] now what's also important to understand is that your foot is still just happening on the one two three and four that's always where it's going to tap you're not gonna chap on any of the other strums and again it's always important to understand that your hand is always moving down and up the same way whether you're strumming or not it's just the only difference is that you're hitting strings when there's an actual strum there but your hand should basically look the same always going into down and up motion and your foot should always be going right along with your hand so now we're going to take the E minor chord for four bars and go through some other strumming pattern examples just to make sure you really have a solid understanding of this so here's another example but this time we're taking the pattern that's only playing the first and the fourth up strum and again when you count this you're always counting the one two three and four that's so important to know where those land because that's your pulse that's the beat but you only count the up strums that you actually play so in this example you count the first and fourth up strum so it would be one and two three four and one and two three four and and so on and again your foot is just tapping right along with your hand so as your hand goes down your foot taps as your hand comes up your foot comes up and your hand should look the same as it has been it's just now it's just where he hits the strings on the way up changes but the motion of your hands should stay the same just evenly and smoothly down and up the whole time so here's an example of this too the backing track this time I'm not going to count along I'm just going to play to the backing track at 60 beats per minute and you can try to count along while I'm playing [Music] or here's an another example this time it's the example where we leave in the second and fourth up-strum and remove the first and the third and again if we were going to count this we count the one two three and four always and then we're only counting the up strums that we play so this would be one two and three four and one two and three four and and so on and here's an example of this to the backing track again I'm not going to count out loud you can try to count along while I'm playing [Music] and here's one final example just taking what we came up with at the beginning of this section and this time it's leaving in the second and the third up-strum removing the first and the fourth and just repeating that for four bars over a minor and again when you count you always count the one two three and four and you only count the up strums that you play so you would count one two and three and four one two and three and four and so on and again here's an example to the backing track [Music] [Music] so now we can just take those examples and play them to the chord progression so here's the first example again the first strumming pattern an example that we used over the E minor chord but now we're just going to play it over the G de minor seven C at 9 so again it's just one strumming pattern per chord and then you repeat over and over this again was the strumming pattern that leaves in the third up strum and removes the rest of the up strums and again you only count the one two three four and the one ups from the e play which is the end of three so one two three and four one two three and four and this time you have more to think about because you're actually transitioning chords after every bar so after every one time you play the pattern through you have to transition a chord play the pattern through again transition as you go through the four bars so here's an example of this with the backing track [Music] or here's the second example we looked at over E minor again just to the chord progression and here's an example of what this sounds like to the backing track [Music] [Applause] [Music] here's the third example we looked at over the e-minor now we're applying it to the chord progression here's an example of that [Music] and here is the last example we looked at over the Imai Newark Ord now we're just applying it to the chord progression here's an example of that [Music] [Music] and here's a tip that will really help you out if you don't know this if you have a strumming pattern like the one on the screen that has that last up strum meaning the end of four so for example over the G chord we have one in two three four and that last and is an up strum right before you have to transition from G to D on the down strum on D well that is a quick transition to make if you try to hold the G the whole time through that last up strum and then quickly transition to D on the first down strum of D it's much easier and actually sounds better to make the transition during that last up strum you may have noticed that that's what I was doing when I was giving examples I make my transitions during that last up strum if that last up strum is there if it's not there I just make it in that same time but you're not actually strumming so if you don't have the end of four there you can easily make it without worrying about it but if the anaphor is there if that last up strum is there to start your transition during that last up strum and hit whatever notes are shared between the chords or just hit open strings if none of the notes are shared and it allows you to make those transitions smoothly don't try to hold the chord through that last up strum and then quickly change in that split second you have to get to that next down strum it'll sound choppy it won't have a good flow and it won't sound right it sounds much better just to let open strings wring out during that last up strum while you're transitioning so now we're to the point that is a really big step in learning or creating your own strumming patterns and in the last section we skip strums but we only skip the up strums for this last part of this lesson we're actually going to skip down strums as well we're gonna skip at least one down strum or a combination of a Down strum and up strums or multiple down strums and multiple up strums or whatever the only thing that's different with this one is that we always have to at least skip one down strum and this may sound like it's super easy but it's actually not it makes it a lot harder to play these patterns but it also makes them a lot more interesting and is a huge step for getting into plain more complicated patterns so here were all the combinations we could have when we skip just an up strum but you're actually fairly limited in the combinations that you can come up with there's a total of 14 combinations that you can come up with when we get into skipping down strums as well there's a ton of combinations and I'm not going to go through all of them because there's so many combinations you can come up with I'll let you come up with them on your own I'm gonna show you how to do it and I'm gonna show you multiple examples that are really popular strumming patterns but then I'm gonna show you how you can take it and actually come up with your own strumming patterns using the method that I'm about to show you and the thing to be aware of if you're crossing out more than two strums in a row you're not just playing quarter notes and eighth notes anymore you're playing some longer notes values but don't worry about that for now we'll get into that in other lessons just be aware though that it's no longer just a mix of quarter notes and eighth notes you could be mixing for example a half note in there or whatever just depending on how many strums you've crossed out in a row but again don't worry about that for now that's a little more advanced than you need to know for this lesson so like I was saying in this part of creating strumming patterns or understanding them is that you can remove any of the strums but you have to remove at least one down strum otherwise you're just going to end up with the combination that we had in the last section where it was just removing up strums and you can remove the first down strum but for now leave it in because it's much easier to play these and keep your time and keep your place in a piece of music when you have that first down strum in there which is the one of each bar so for now just always leave that first down strum so that means we can remove any of the strums except the first down strum but we also have to always remove at least one of the other down strums so we could do that with any we could take the first up strum and the second down strum and end up with this pattern we could take just the second down strum we could take the second third and fourth down strums leave everything else we could just take the second down strum it doesn't matter we can take any of the strums out except the first one just to keep it simpler and because it's more common to leave the first one in there we can take any of the up strums out and we can take any of the down strums except the first one it's just we always have to take out at least one down strum so that could be just taking out one down strum or it could be taking out all the down strums except the first one or it could be taking out one down strum one up strum two down strums one up strum one down strum all the rest of you up strums it doesn't matter just as long as you're removing one of the down strum so you four sides the first down strum and you're gonna come up with all these cool strumming patterns and like I said there's tons of combinations that you can get when you do this so I'm not going to list them all out I don't even know how many there are I'd have to figure that out unlike when you're just removing an up strum there's a fairly limited amount so what I'm gonna do now is show you some of the most popular combinations which are just ones that have been used many times in many songs over the years because they sound so good it doesn't mean there's the only good ones it doesn't mean that's what you should only learn you should try different ones and come up with different ones it just means that they're really common because they sound good they've been used in lots of songs so I'm gonna start there just so I can have a starting point and give you ones that you might want to start with when you start doing this because you'll be able to use those patterns and tons of songs and another thing to be aware of which actually makes this more difficult when you're removing one of the down strums is that you always tap your foot where the quarter notes are where those down strums would be even if they're not there so for example in this example here that third down strum is gone but you would still tap your foot there and your hand would still move down like you're strumming there but you're not going to hit any string so that actually makes it a lot harder to keep time but once you get it down it starts to feel fairly natural and if you're just removing one down strum it's not too bad and you have the rest to keep your time but if you're removing multiple down strums or multiple combinations of strums it can be really tricky to know where that quarter notes gonna hit so it's really important to practice this with the metronome and a backing track so that you make sure that your foot always tapping where those quarter notes are because the quarter note is always there even if you're not strumming because the quarter note in 4/4 time is the pulse of the song it's where the beat is and so you should always tap where the quarter notes are even if you're not strumming down in that spot so for example if I played this through with the metronome just at 60 beats per minute you'll hear that the metronomes clicking on the down strums but it's also clicking in the one down strum that's missing and so your foot would still tap where that missed down strum is where that skip down strum is and your hand would still move down like your strumming is just you're not going to strum the strings you're gonna skip the strings but your hand still moves the same no matter when you're strumming strings or not your hand is still just moving down and up smoothly and evenly so here's the metronome playing while these strums are highlighted so you can hear that the metronome is clicking on the quarter notes where the down strums are even if you're not playing a Down strum and then if we put that into four bars of music I'll just take that same strumming pattern that we just did and repeat it it would sound like this again I'll play it along with the metronome [Music] so now when you count this it's really important to understand that you're still gonna count all the quarter notes even if you're not strumming them so unlike the eighth notes you'd only count the ones that you strum you always count the quarter notes because you always need to know where those are because that's the pulse and what you can do is count it quieter or just count it in your head but you always need to count it so for example with this one we've left out the third down strum but I would still count that three I would still count one and two and three and four and it's just I might count the three softer or I might just count it in my head but I need to know where that three is because that's part of the pulse that's one of the beats in this rhythm because we're in 4/4 time and again you start by counting out loud just so you get good at it but eventually you just count in your head and then eventually you just feel it and you know where you are all the time and again that three that's missing you still tap your foot there your foot is still always going down and up with your hand and you always tap even if you're not strumming one of the down strums so now I'm going to count this along to the metronome just to show you how you would count it [Music] and now I'm gonna play this for four bars along with the backing track and not count you can try to count along with me [Music] so now I'm just gonna go over some of the most popular combinations you can come up with this is by no means all the combinations you can come up with but these will be really useful ones for you to learn early on that you'll find in tons of songs or you'll be able to use in tons of songs even if it's not the exact pattern in that song so the first really popular strumming pattern is removing the second and the third down strum and you end up with this and then if we were to plug that into four bars with the e minor chord and again if I was to count this I would still count the two and the three even though I'm not strumming them because I need to always be aware of where my quarter notes land because that's opposed to the song I may whisper those or I may just count it in my head but I need to count those so I'm always aware where they are so here's an example of playing this with the metronome and counting [Music] and here's an example playing this with the backing track but I'm not going to count along this time you can count for me [Music] here's another really common strumming pattern this time we removed the first and the second up strums and the fourth down strum and you end up with this and here it is with the E minor chord four four bars and then again if we count this we still count that four even though it's a Down strum that we're skipping but we only count the up strums that we play so we would count one two three and four and but that four we may whisper that or just count it in our head but we still need to be aware of it where it is but the up strums that we count are only the up strums that we play so here's an example of counting this with the metronome [Music] two three and three and now here it is with the backing track and this time you can count for me [Music] or another really popular strumming pattern needs to remove the first up strum and the third down strum and we end up with this and this is one of the most popular strumming patterns out there you can use this in just countless songs in countless situations and here it is for four bars with the e minor chord and again if we count this we always count the down strums and you can count the ones that we're skipping quietly but you only count the up strums that you play so for this example would be one two and three and four and and again you can whisper the three so one two and three and four and but you always need to be aware of where those down strums are but you don't count the up strums that you don't play so here it is counting four four bars with the metronome [Music] to and this time again I'll play it to the backing track but you count for me [Music] now another thing about playing these patterns that I haven't mentioned yet but it's an easy way to remember how to play them is for starting now if you're struggling counting you can instead of counting say down and up for your strums so for example this one I would say down down up up down up I would still try to phrase it in the same time but then I would only say the down and up strums and it's easier to get the feel so when I'm playing along when I'm starting out I'm pretty much training my brain to tell my hand what to do and when to strum you need to get past that to the point where you can count along with the actual counting of the time but that's a helpful technique you can use so that one like I said is down down up up down up this one you could say down down down up up down down down up up and so on and like I said that's just helping your hand know where to actually hit the strings your hands still moving down and up the whole time but those are where you hit the strings so now we can just take those popular strumming patterns that I just showed you and plug them into the chord progression so here's the first example now instead of just playing a minor for four bars we're gonna play the chord progression the GD e minor seven C at nine and I'm just going to demo this to the backing track so you can hear it and you can count for me [Music] [Music] or here's the second one that we went over this time again to the chord progression is set as just a minor here it is to the backing track [Music] and here's the third one applied to the chord progression [Music] and here's the fourth one applied to the chord progression again this is one of the most common strumming patterns you'll come across so this may be the first one you want to learn when you're actually up to this section where you're skipping some of the down strums [Music] and again just I just have to reiterate this over and over your hand is always moving down and up your foot is always always moving along right with your hand and you're always tapping on the one two three and four on the quarter notes whether you're playing or not because that's the pulse of the song that's where you would tap along that's how you keep good time and when you count you always count all of the quarter notes even if you play them or not even if you're just counting in your head you need to be aware where those quarter notes are and you don't count the up strums that you don't play you only count the up strums that you play but again you're gonna get to the point where you just count in your head and then get to the point where you don't even really have to think about counting unless you're learning a new piece that's more complicated and you need to figure it out and get it down but you'll eventually just get to a point where you can really feel it and you're not even necessarily thinking about County most the time but always just try to keep your foot tapping on those quarter notes because that's gonna help you keep good time always those quarter notes are so important in 4/4 time so now we're to a really fun part and that's where you can create your own strumming patterns what you're gonna find is that you're just gonna end up with strumming patterns that are already used and the ones you like the most are probably used a lot because the reason they're used a lot is because they sound good but this will let you know how strumming patterns are created and set you so far ahead of most people who are either beginner or even an intermediate or even some advanced people because most people don't build this foundation first and then they just get to the point of playing things by feel but then when it comes time to count and really know where you are really play in certain situations even more advanced players can really struggle with that for me personally strumming came fairly easily for me I was just naturally able to strum more complicated patterns but I was horrible at actually counting and knowing exactly where I was at all times it took me practicing that part to get good at it so I'm gonna go over the method for creating your own strumming patterns you can just follow along and write this out on a piece of paper so to create a strumming pattern we're just gonna take all down and up strumming so eighth note strumming and we're just gonna remove certain strums and write it out again with those strums remove so to do this you would write out something like I have on the screen here where you have a bar with all eight note strums so eight strums down and up and then you would draw an arrow pointing to another bar with just the first down strum in there and then to create a strumming pattern you're just gonna randomly remove any of the strums except the first strum we're gonna keep the first time in there because it's much easier and much more common and then down the road for more advanced stuff you can start practicing removing the first down strum so you can just randomly cross out any of the strums except the first one so for example if I cross out the set first up strum and the second down strum I would cross them out like that and then in the bar that just has the one down strum I would write out the strums with those two strums missing so it would look like this and now I've created a strumming pattern I could just repeat this over and over again and it's really good to write the timing out as well so for example with this one you would write one two and three and four and because we've skipped the first up strum and the second down strum the first up strum you wouldn't count if you didn't play it and the second down strum you would count because it's a quarter note it's a down strum it's a quarter note you need to know where that is all the time so I drew it in red so that's how you would create a strumming pattern now you can plug this into the chord progression and you have a strumming pattern you [Music] [Music] but I could do that with any combination I could cross out any of the strums besides the first one and come up with the strumming pattern and the thing to be aware of is that the more strums in a row that you cross out the harder it is to keep your time because you're gonna have a long period of time where you just have to keep tapping without strumming you need to keep moving your hand like your plane that'll help you keep time but if you're not playing anything for multiple strums in a row it's a lot harder to keep your time so just be aware of that some you may want to start off by only crossing out two strums in a row instead of like four strums in a row because then you're gonna have a long pause where you have to really feel that time but once you get used to it'll be easier and easier and you can cross out and just leave the first one and feel it but that would be a really boring strumming pattern but there are times when that is the right part for the song [Music] so like I said just write these out on a sheet of paper come up with your own strumming pattern and see which one's sound good to you which ones are easy to play which ones are hard to play find your favorite ones work on those first and you can create a whole book of strumming patterns if you want and just try them out any time you write a new song or apply them to different chord progressions and see what you like

Channel: Move Forward Guitar

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Keywords: Strumming patterns, Guitar strumming patterns, how to play strumming patterns, beginner strumming patterns, guitar rhythm, Guitar Lessons, Free Guitar Lessons, Guitar Lessons on YouTube, How To Play Guitar, Guitar courses, Learn Guitar, Beginner Guitar Lessons, Intermediate Guitar Lessons, Advanced Guitar Lessons, Chad Lambert, Move Forward Guitar

Id: I1JVwjnWTKw

Length: 61min 16sec (3676 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020