A question I often get asked is how do I find the strum pattern in a song?
It seems like a simple question but there might be more to it than it
appears on the surface. I'll explain more. Let's do this.
Finding the perfect strum pattern for a song can be a bit elusive
especially if you're early in your guitar learning journey. While there's no
magical formula, I'm going to give you a step-by-step process that you can follow to
make it much easier then I'll give you some tips and answer some common questions I often get.
The good news is everyone has some degree of built-in natural rhythm and a lot of times
what's happening when we're trying to figure out the rhythm for a song is our head is kind
of getting in the way we're trying to analyze it instead of just feel it and feel the groove
but there are good reasons it can be difficult. With most popular songs, there's a lot going on.
Oftentimes there's not even a guitar part and at other times there may be several guitars and the
actual rhythm is created by several different parts put together. This means that there's not
one perfect strum pattern. Your job is to come up with something that's basically the essence
of the groove that you can translate on your guitar and it's going to be somewhat personal
preference and of course it's also based on your own technical ability to both strum and change
chords. Now that said if you come up with a strum pattern and it works well with the song for you
then it works. It's good. Let me go through a basic process that I use when I'm trying to
figure out a strum pattern for a song. It's worked well for me and for many students.
Now first and most importantly you gotta figure out the beat and whether it's a three beat or four
beat song. Yeah, you could use the terminology three quarter time, four four times all that
but I want to keep it directly to the essence of the matter. We're looking for four pulses or
three pulses. Now keep in mind most popular music about 80% is going to be four pulses
that means 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. How did you start off without the guitar? Just either
tapping on my knee or clapping my hands sometimes tapping my foot then I kinda listen to where the
bass strum is falling and where the chords are changing and I can pretty quickly feel
if it's a 4 4 3 4. You know I'll try it out. I tap four and if it doesn't fit,
I'll try three if that seems to go right into the pocket, great. If not I'll go back and
forth a few times till I figure it out. Let me show you a quick demo of how I might do this.
So first I want to listen to where the pulse is and I'm going to start clapping or tapping my
leg. In this case.. okay, yeah that works.
Now that sounds about right that's kind of I can tell by this little closely that's where the bass
strum and the bass guitar are going - twice as fast. I think that’s the actual beat
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 . Sounds like 4. Let me try 3 and see what it sounds like 1 2 3 1 2 3.
See, that doesn't change on the chords. Let’s try again
1 2 1 2 3 4 - 1 2 3 4 . I’m pretty clear that’s four beats 1 2 3 4.
Now once I got this sorted I'm ready to pull out my guitar.
I'm going to start off really easy. I’m just going to play that same beat on my guitar usually just
straight down and I'll even mute the strings just to get the rhythm pattern. Then I'll go on to add
the chords that means of course you got to know the chords of the song and I might not even do the
whole song maybe just a chorus or verse just to get the groove going with the chord changes. And
then finally, I'll start enhancing the straight down rhythm with some up strums. Usually the way
I do that is I try to match one of the simple strum patterns I already know with the groove
that I've got going and that'll usually give me at least a good foundation that I can build on later.
Let me show you another little demo of that process. Now I'm going to translate that to
the guitar. I'm not just going to mute the strings at the start. Let's find that beat there we go.
We could go twice as fast also. I think the beat is 1 2 1. I'm listening to melody too
and I know the melody went down to the place where that's usually the beat - 1 2 3. Got it now 3 4.
Now I'm going to try just playing the chords using that B.
I'm going to go for that every other chord to keep it simpler.
Ah, there we go. Got another course and then I'll up it a little bit. There we go.
That's working 1 2 3 4. So once you can do that pretty well it's time to start trying some
upstrokes. What I'll usually do is try to match a strum or a simple strum that I already know to
what I'm doing. Let me find that one again 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 that’s a nice simple strum.
I'll start without the chords again
and get the more complicated part. Here we go with a chord. Does that work?
So that's an idea of what the process looks like. It's meant to be rough guidelines. You
don't have to follow an exact order. Try to figure out the strum before you figure
out where the pulse is and whether it’s 3 or 4. It’s not gonna go anywhere. I would say in all
fairness I usually have to kinda go back and forth a few times before I get it just right.
I wanna give you some more valuable tips that will help you tremendously.
First make sure you have a repertoire of a handful of
basic strum patterns that you can use in situations like this.
I'm gonna go twice as fast too. I think that's the actual beat 1
2 3 sounds like 4. Let me try 3. See if it sounds like 1 2 3 - 1 2
Now you want to make sure some are four beat patterns and some are three beat patterns.
Maybe a little heavier on the four beat pattern and you want to practice this,
that's how you get good at it. Don't be disappointed if the first time you try
it you don't get the results that you hope for. Start with simpler songs with a fairly easy strum
pattern let's say or one that you maybe even know what to use. And then try listening to a variety
of songs , picking up the beat and trying to discern if it’s a three beat or a four beat song.
One thing I’ll mention here is when I talk about beats, I’m talking about even spacing so it’s
a kind of thing you tap your foot to. You want to be even between each of the beats like this.
Another tip is, if you get a hold of the sheet music. It can be helpful even if you can't read
sheet music. It's valuable to see what they use for a time signature and they might have some
other clues and along those lines I'd encourage you little by little to learn a little bit of
music theory and how to read sheet music at least time signatures that’s the three quarter time,
four four time that kind of stuff. I'll put a link to a video that'll explain a little more that.
Sometimes when I'm trying to figure out a strum pattern I'll tap on my knees and I can get sort
of with one hand what would be a downstroke and what would be an upstroke. You can experiment
that and see if it works for you. Now here's an important one. Go for the simplest strum pattern
that works with that song. You can always enhance it later and add more complexity to it. But if you
get the basic pattern you get a chance to get used to the song then you got more ways to go.
And one last tip we use a lot of these down up arrows to indicate strum patterns.
Take those with a grain of salt. They are helpful but they don't always exactly
map out the strum and it's not just about down and up patterns. It's also
nuances like how hard you hit the strings, which part of the strings you hit and things like that
so just a little bit of a warning. Don't get too attached to those arrows.
So that's it for now. Thanks for joining me. If you've
got some value out of this video please give me a thumbs up I appreciate it
and if you'd like a little more help with your strumming, I'll put a link to a video at the
end of this video that I think you'll find incredibly valuable. Check it out.