Hi! I’m Nate Savage and welcome to video 9 of the Rhythm Guitar Quick-Start Series.
In this lesson, we’re going to go over some of the most fundamental strumming patterns
that you’re going to need to know as a rhythm guitar player. These strumming patterns are
kind of like the fundamental building blocks that you’re going to be using to build a
lot of your strumming patterns in the future and if you can get this down really well,
it’s going to make learning new strumming patterns a lot easier for you.
Some of these are probably going to seem pretty simple to you but it’s very important that
you get these down very well. I have a jam track for you. What we’re going to do is
use just the drum jam track or loop that we’ve been using over the past few lessons to work
on these simple strumming patterns. Before we jump into the strumming patterns
that we’re going to learn in this lesson, I want to go over some simple strumming technique
tips with you, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page. The first tip that I
have for you is to relax. By that, I mean don’t tense up. If you’re tense when you
strum, it’s going to do a couple of things. It’s going to make your playing not really
sound fluid and you’re going to get tired easily. The first tip is to relax. The second
tip goes kind of hand in hand with that and that is to not just lock your wrist and strum
from your elbow. What you want to do is make sure that your wrist is relaxed and not locked
up. That way, you’re going to have some fluidity again in your playing and you won’t
be so rigid. You won’t get tired as easy. One way to kind of incorporate this or think
about this is to pretend like you have something stuck on your finger and you’re just trying
to flick it off. If you think about that, my elbow is still moving but there’s a lot
of motion coming from my wrist too and it’s really relaxed.
Remember those couple of tips. As we move forward, you should be good to go.
The first strumming pattern we’re going to look at is a basic eighth note strumming
pattern that uses all down strokes and if you’ve never counted eight notes before,
I’ll teach you how to do that real quick. Usually when you have a song that’s going
on, you have an underlying pulse like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Those would be quarter notes
and for this strumming pattern, we need eight notes. So basically we’re going to double
that and to do that we count 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…the key
here when doing this eight note strumming pattern with all downstrokes is to concentrate
on keeping the notes even and in time. This may seem like a really simple strumming pattern
again but it’s really great for concentrating on developing your timing and feel on the
guitar. For the rest of these strumming patterns, I’m just going to be playing a regular G
chord. And here is how this one would sound over the jam track.
The next essential strumming pattern that we’re going to go over uses the same exact
same rhythm as the last one but instead of using all downstrokes, we’re going to be
using alternating down and upstrokes. A lot of newer guitar players have trouble with
their upstrokes, so I’m going to give you two tips that will help you get these upstrokes
down really well. The first one is when I’m playing a G chord and I make a downstroke,
I generally hit all six strings. When I make an upstroke, I’m only hitting about the
top three of four strings. So don’t feel like you have to hit all six strings with
your upstrokes. Second tip I have for you is don’t dig in too much of your pick on
the strings on your upstroke, otherwise it can be a little bit hard to get your pick
through the strings. Just enough of the tip of the pick to make the strings ring out in
a volume that matches your downstroke, so down, up…
So, like I said, a straight eight note strumming pattern again, so we’re going to have 1
and 2 and 3 and 4 and…on the numbers you’re going to be hitting downstrokes, on the ands
you’re going to be hitting upstrokes. Here’s how it will sound with the drums.
Let’s take this eighth note strumming pattern one step further by putting some accents in
with it. Being able to put accents in any of your strumming pattern is a really valuable
skill to have. Basically what I’m going to do is go through this exact same pattern
but I’m going to accent beats 2 and 4, so the second and fourth downstrokes. So if you
have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, you’re just going to dig in to the strings a little bit
more on 2 and 4. What this is going to do is it’s going to kind of create a feeling
like a drummer might be playing with you or something like that. Here’s what it will
sound like with the jam track.
So using accents in a regular kind of meat and potato strumming pattern like this is a great way to customize it to whatever song you’re
playing too. You can tell if the strum is supposed to be accented. There’s a little
arrow, probably above the chord or the tab on the sheet music.
This next strumming pattern is a little bit more involved but it’s still based on a
regular straight eighth note strumming pattern. I call this one the down, down, up strumming
pattern and it incorporates a concept called the Constant Strumming Technique. And all
that is, the Constant Strumming Technique, is when you keep your eighth note strumming
going, even if you don’t actually dig in to the strings on one of the strums that you’re
doing. And let me just show you this strumming pattern that will become more apparent once
we go through it. The basic counting for this strumming pattern is 1, 2 and…so if you
pay attention, my arm kept going just like I normally would, 1 and 2 and, but I left
out the first and, so the first upstroke I didn’t dig into the string, so 1 and 2 and…just
do that over and over again until you get it. 1 and 2 and…1 and 2 and… so that’s the basic
down, down, up strumming pattern. You can do that over beats one and two and over beats
three and four as well, so you have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. The trick here is to keep
your strumming arm going on the eighth notes even when you don’t dig in to the strings.
Here’s how it will sound with the jam track.
Learning how to leave strums out of eighth note or sixteenth note strumming patterns like this is a really valuable skill to have
and speaking of sixteenth note strumming patterns, our last strumming pattern that we’re going
to go over is a straight sixteenth note strumming pattern. If you don’t know how to count
sixteenth notes, we’ll go over that real quick. Sixteenth notes are basically when
you have four evenly spaced strums over each beat and the way you count sixteenth notes
is 1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a…so we have four syllables to count for each of
the four strums contained on each beat. This may seem pretty simple to you but there’s
going to be a lot more strumming going on with the sixteenth note strumming pattern.
So be careful. Don’t let the pick fly out of your hand and don’t tense up when you’re
doing all those strumming. So start out slowly. If you have to grab a metronome and lower
the tempo down, that’s totally fine. Work on your strumming and you can even throw accents
in with the sixteenth note strumming pattern if you want to. Here’s how it will sound
with the jam track.
So now that you’ve been exposed to these fundamental strumming patterns, it’s important that you pull up the jam track and start applying
them to your open chords, your power chords and your bar chords.
Thanks for watching this video. In the next lesson, we’re going to look at a completely
different aspect of rhythm guitar playing and that’s working on developing your timing
and your feel. This is an incredibly important topic for your overall musicianship, especially
if you plan on recording or playing with other people.
If you have any questions about these strumming patterns, just leave them here in the comments
and I’ll get back to you. Otherwise, you can email me nate@guitarsystems.com.
I'll see you around.