hi I'm Nate savage and in this lesson
I'm going to teach you five guitar
strumming patterns that you must know if
you're your guitarist now if you're a
newer guitar player who's learned most
to your open chords and feels like your
strumming hand has been kind of left
behind this lesson is going to be
perfect for you the five strumming
patterns in this lesson are very
progressive and by that I mean once you
learn the first one the second one
builds off the first and the third one
builds up the second one and so on not
you're likely going to be familiar with
a couple of these strumming patterns in
this lesson but I would encourage you to
follow along because I'm going to be
giving you some tips that are going to
be important for your career as a
guitarist throughout this lesson I'm
going to be keeping the chords really
simple I'm only going to be using an E
chord that way you can focus all of your
attention on your strumming hand getting
your timing really well and learning
these patterns that I'm going to teach
you in fact if you want to to focus on
your strumming hand even more you don't
even have to make any chords you can
just mute the strings like that and
focus on the strumming patterns all
those strumming patterns in this lesson
are eight note strumming patterns so if
you don't know how to count eighth notes
I'm going to go over that with you real
quick when you hear a song most songs
are in four four times so you count one
two three four one two three four right
those would be quarter notes usually now
two counts eighth notes all you have to
do is stick an N in between each number
so instead of one two three four you
would have one and two and three and
four and one and two and three and four
and that's the basic idea behind eighth
notes and the idea is to space out the
counting the one and two and three and
four and as evenly as possible with
these strumming patterns so as I
mentioned all of these strumming
patterns are going to be eight the note
bass drumming patterns so you're going
to see eighth notes displayed at the
bottom of the screen to help you kind of
learn all five patterns let's get into
this first strumming pattern and this
one may seem very simple but it's very
important it's an all downstroke
strumming pattern using eighth notes you
can tell that it's an all down stroke
pattern by the little kind of upside
down use symbol on each beat each one
and two and three and four and and like
I said this makes them really simple to
you but don't discount it it's very
important to be able to do
simple things very well I was in a
studio session playing some acoustic
guitar and I had all these fancy
strumming patterns lined up in my mind
and the producer said no just do a
straight all download downstroke
strumming pattern right I did it and it
ended up sounding great better than the
stuff I had planned it may seem easy but
this is an essential strumming pattern
that's really going to help you develop
your timing so grab a metronome put it
on our jam track and work on using an
all downstrokes strumming pattern using
eighth notes really focus on your timing
and work on keeping all the eighth notes
evenly spaced
another thing that you can work on with
the strumming pattern is dynamic control
it's such a simple strumming pattern
it's easy to work on getting really soft
getting a little bit louder and getting
really loud because as guitar players
when we get quiet we tend to drag a
little bit and when we get louder we
tend to rush up it so this is a great
strumming pattern to work on that to
remember don't just lock your wrists and
strum from your elbow either relax get
some wrist motion in there I almost
pretend like something stuck to your
finger just trying to flick it off
here's how you can work with this
strumming pattern to help you develop
your dynamics
you
using a strumming pattern like this to
warm up and just kind of get yourself
centered in your mind focused on your
timing is awesome now strumming pattern
number two believe it or not is the
exact same rhythm as strumming pattern
number one but instead of using all
downstrokes
you're going to be using down and up
strokes alternating you can tell that
were going to be using up strokes on
every other strum because if you look at
the hands above the hands you're going
to see little arrows those are upstroke
symbols so the way this works out for
the counting for the downstrokes and
upstrokes
the numbers are going to be down strokes
so one two three and four will be down
strokes and the ands will all be up
strokes this is an incredibly useful
strumming pattern and it's also the
basis for all of the other strumming
patterns we're going to learn in this
lesson now let me just tell you a lot of
newer guitar players think that they
have to hit all of the strings when they
do an upstroke strum
and that's not really the case we not do
a downstroke I generally hit all six
strings if it's a six string note chord
but with my upstroke I generally only
hit like the top three or four strings
that makes it a lot easier to get that
upstroke through the strings when you're
doing a lot of strumming so try this
pattern relax don't lock your wrists and
concentrate on keeping the strumming as
even as possible
you
so work on this pattern get it down make
sure to practice it with a metronome or
a jam track or something like that and
once you have it down and it's sounding
good with a metronome
you could put start to put accents
anywhere you want to in this case I'm
just going to show you an example of
what happens when I accent the
downstrokes on two and four
you
and being able to throw accents in like
that is really useful because no matter
what song you're playing if it's an
eighth note bass strumming pattern you
can put the accents in a place that fit
the song you're playing with strumming
pattern number three is very similar to
strumming pattern number two but we're
going to introduce a new stylistic
element called a muted strum a muted
strum gives you a more percussive sound
and basically what we're doing is are
kind of copying the sound of a drum kit
when you hear a drum player play one two
three four one two three four on two and
four they're hitting this scenario that
snare sound that's what we're going to
be emulating before we get into the
strumming pattern let me just show you
how to do a muted strum real quick we're
going to do is when you come down to do
this muted strum what you're going to be
doing with a down stroke you're going to
let off the pressure on the strings with
your left hand a little bit and as you
go through the strings or right before
you're going to come down and kind of
hit that gets hotter and mute the
strings as your pick passes through the
string so so the strumming pattern we're
going to use this with is a straight
down up down up down up
alternating eighth note strumming
pattern but after the one on the two
you're going to use a muted down stroke
strum and then we're going to do another
upstroke so it's really only a to beat
strumming pattern that just repeats over
and over again so you have
to
and if you look at the graphic for this
strumming pattern you can tell that
you're supposed to do a muted strum by
the little X that's over the two
so slow this one way down if you have to
don't be afraid to really dig into the
guitar with that muted strum this
strumming pattern always reminds me of
CCR and I love that it's just a really
cool sound and once you get the muted
strums down you can stick them in
anywhere in any strumming pattern okay
and strumming pattern number four we're
going to start to rest on some of the
counts up until now we've been digging
into the strings on all of the eighth
notes now we're going to start leaving
some of them out you may not realize it
up to this point but you've been making
use of a very important technique called
the constant strumming technique look
back at strumming pattern - you had
strict alternating down up down up down
up eighth notes so you had a constant
strumming pattern down up down up down
up we're going to continue that
up-and-down motion for this strumming
but now we're going to leave some of the
eighth notes out stay with me because
this is all going to make a lot more
sense once you learn the strumming
pattern if you look at the end of one
you can see it's grayed out there's
nothing there normally if you're playing
a straight eighth notes drumming pattern
you will play
it would be played with an upstroke but
this time there's nothing there there's
no strum there so we're going to go down
and we're still going to come back up
but we're not going to dig into the
strings this time I'd beat - we're gonna
play down so the whole strumming pattern
very simple one and two gonna keep that
up strumming motion going even though
you're not digging into the strings you
can play the same exact thing for beats
three and four so
now it's very important when you're
learning strumming patterns like this
when you're first getting started to
count out loud that way you can keep
track of where you are and sometimes it
helps to exaggerate the motions just so
you can keep track of where you are as
well so let's try this pattern with a
metronome a quick
so work on this relax stay loose and
make sure you have a constant motion
with your strumming hand when you're
working on stuff like this also remember
that your up strokes don't have to go
through all six strings you can just the
top four shrinks or so strumming pattern
number five is a little bit more complex
than the other strumming patterns and it
uses that same constant strumming
technique that we're talking about when
I hear this pattern I always think of a
ballad so I'm calling this the Ballad
stomach better take a look at this
pattern displayed below
notice that the strum on beat three is
grayed out and that's going to give you
a different feel because this time we're
leaving up a Down stroke so you have
three
so basically we're just leaving out the
downstroke on beat three we're not
digging into the strings but we're still
making that downward motion and the rest
of the strumming is just straight eight
those three
so remember to keep your strumming arm
going and leave out that down stroke
that occurs on b3
as a newer guitar player you're probably
gonna have to find the happy medium
between holding on to the pick tight
enough to where it doesn't fly to your
hands right but you have to hold on to
it loosely enough so you won't tense up
so you can keep a nice relaxed feel
going so now you have five basic
strumming patterns under your belt and
it may take you a while to get these
down and get them perfect but the cool
part about it is once you can play these
and now you understand what's going on
with the constant strumming technique
and everything you're going to be a lot
closer to being able to pick out the
strumming patterns in your favorite
songs and make up your own cool
strumming patterns and if you want to
dress these strumming patterns up you
can just put accents in there you can do
muted strums and you can even try
leaving out other notes with the
constant strumming technique always play
along with the metronome we're better
yet play along with the jam track it's
always best to apply what you're working
on to a real musical setting thanks for
watching this video I just launched a
brand new guitar lesson series that can
get right now for free just go to guitar
system.com slash free -
you