Hey, in this video I'm gonna show you three easy but critical strum patterns
so you can play a variety of songs with confidence. If you're new to guitar
you're gonna especially love this. Let's do it.
Hey there, I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success where I help you learn to
play guitar and unleash that musician with inside you. If you're new here,
please subscribe to my channel and click the bell so I can get you more guitar
lessons, tips and tutorials. Having a few basic strum patterns under your belt
it's critical to enjoying practicing and playing guitar. Today I'll show you three
foundational strum patterns that are fairly easy but at the same time you'll
be able to use for your entire guitar playing journey. All these patterns are
based on a basic up-down strumming pattern. We're gonna start with that just
as an exercise before we do the strum patterns. So for all these I'm going to
use an E chord just to keep everything the same. Look at my right hand. We're
gonna just go down, up, down.
Now I'm going to use a counting of one and two and three and four and. This will
just help me explain the rhythms at some points. So one is down and is up down, up.
This will be consistent through each of these strum patterns. So try this one out
with me just to get used to it. Go ahead and just put your hand over
your neck for right. Now we're just gonna make a sound and strum with your right
hand down up down up down up down up. Now we're going to count that. Count with me.
It will be 1 and and so on. Let's do it. One and two and three and four and. By the way, if you're
using a pick, you might sound a little rough at this
point, don't worry about that just do the best you can. And by the way, I do have
another video on how to get a smooth strumming sound with a pick so you can
check that out too. Now let's go to the E chord and we're gonna do that first
strumming pattern. The first strumming pattern is a combinations of down and
down up. First you go down then down
up, down and end with a down. So if you will count it, it would be one
two, and three. So try that with me now nice and slow. Here we go ready, play.
one, two and three, four. Again one and two and three and four.
This is a good foundation pattern. At this speed, it doesn't sound like much
but one of the tricks is to add a few nuances. One of the tips I'll give you is
when you're going down, strum all the strings and on the way up just aim for
the top three or four strings. Don't try to brush all the way back through all
the strings. This creates a little bit of an effect that's da da da da. Listen to it
man.
So with that strum, down, down, down.
You see how it sounds a little different because I'm putting a little more
emphasis on the down by strumming all the strings and a little lighter touch
with less strings on the way up. Down, down, up, down, up.
There's a slow version of that. So as you progress to the strums learn the
patterns but start looking for the subtleties in the pattern that makes us
sound more musical. Let's go on to pattern number two. Strumming pattern
number two is similar to the first one but we're adding something to it. So now
it's
Try it with me nice and slow. It's gonna be down down up and then we skip all the
strings and come up and then another down up. Start from the beginning.
Ready, go. Down, down, up, now skip the strings up, down, up and you see my arm keeps going up and down. That stays
the same ready, go.
Now if we were to count that out, it would be one, two and three and four and
down, down, up, skip. Up, down, up. Again, you can put a little more emphasis
on the downs by hitting all the strings a little less on the up by just hitting
a few of the strings and it will give a little more variety, a little more
movement.
Notice every now and then I even put a little extra emphasis on the up to
create a little motion. Now for strum number three we're gonna add another
technique. We'll call this the mute technique. To demonstrate this, I'm going
to make my E chord and I'm just gonna do the technique and then we'll put it in a
strum. The mute is where you hit the strings and then mute at the same time
of your palms. It sounds like this. Now most of that sound is coming from me turning
my wrist to hit the strings at the same time palming with my right hand palm. In
reality when I actually play I also usually lighten up on my left hand to
kind of help it out but let's just focus on the right hand for now. You can always
play around with that as you get more experienced. Just this technique with me
make your E chord and let's just go down and palm at the same time so you barely
hear the notes. They just slightly sound before you're muting them out. Now I
encourage you to practice that technique just do it a little bit each day till
you start feeling it. And again it's a combination of the wrist going down a
little bit same time the arm moving down and then palming. Okay so now here's how
it fits into the strum.
I call this an acoustic rock strum because commonly used in music that's
kind of a rock type beat like Creedence Clearwater Revival even though
it's acoustic guitar. So try it with me now. We're gonna go down up mute up and
that's the whole strum. Down, up, mute , up. Let's try it ready, go.
Now, really slow for a minute. Try this with me. Painfully slow. Ready, go. One and mute, up - One and mute, up - One and mute, up. Now if I
were counting it out, it would be one
and two and three and four. That would be all four beats. You notice I'm playing the same little
pattern over twice. Again, ready go. Down, up, mute, up, down, up, mute , up. Now I encourage you to practice this just like
it is. Take one at a time and get fairly comfortable with it and then move on to
the second strum and then learning the third one. And when you're ready, I
encourage you to practice with either a metronome which is good even better
would be some jam tracks. It makes it more fun and you get a feel of how it
actually fits in with the music. This video is part of a playlist on guitar
strumming lessons. And if you want to learn more about guitar strumming, go
ahead and subscribe and I'll make sure you know when those videos are available.
Now if I've already released those videos by the time you get to this
lesson I'll put a little card up in one of these corners so it'll direct you to
the playlist and you can find the other videos in that playlist about
guitar strumming patterns and guitar strumming lessons. Let me know in the
comments if this video helped you out. And also while you're there let me know
if there's anything else that you'd like to see me make videos on. Take care for
now.