Must Know Strumming Patterns for Acoustic Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. Today we're going to be going over some essential acoustic guitar strumming patterns. We're going to keep it simple in the beginning, and then we're going to progress to harder progressions as we move through the video. Now, I tell students all the time, do not assume you know the basics, okay? I find for a lot of students, where they run into issues with strumming and timing is that they rush through the foundation items. So go through the intro parts of this video. You might learn something new that you didn't know. They might have an aha moment. Because if you don't have the foundation, when we move on to the later stuff, it's just going to get more difficult and you'll get frustrated. So even if you just go through it very, very quickly, as a refresher, I recommend you do that just to make sure your timing is spot on. So this is level one. All right? This is where I kind of start. People in my seven level guitar system, we just want to start by working on timing. Because when I ask students, what's the biggest thing you have trouble with with your strumming and your guitar? And they're like, the timing. The timing's just off or, you know, keeping the timing when you're changing chords, okay? So those are very, very common things. So the basics we want to do is we want to start by just getting a good time on our four count, okay? So a lot of songs in music, we count to four. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2. So I'm just going to take a G chord, okay? And we're going to just do four down strums. We call these quarter notes. And we're just going to go 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay? This is going to be the foundation and basis for everything we do in this video. Okay? So if you can't do this, you might want to sit here a little bit on this strumming pattern. Now, the hardest part comes when you have to switch. Switch between chords. So I'm going to start by just doing 4 strums on G, 4 strums on E minor, 4 strums on G, 4 Strums on E minor. The reason, because to switch into an E minor chord, I just have to pivot my finger, okay? So my first finger slides over. My second finger pivots down. Nice, easy chord change.

So we got 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2.

Keep going. Don't forget to breathe. Okay? If feel like your forearm is tightening Up. Relax. It's not easy to do. Just breathe. Okay, let's pick up the speed a little bit. All right? 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.$1, 2, 3, 4.—.

Okay, so that is the foundation. And in there, you probably heard me sneak in an up strum on one of those accidentally, because that's what we're going to be moving to next. So let's take this very slow, like I said, and we're going to do down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Now, these are counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. All right, so it's 1 and 2.

And 3 and 4 & down, up.

Down, up, down, up, down.

Up. Now, if you feel yourself gripping the pick on the ups, and it's more like you're kind of catching and jarring those strings again, it's a little bit of a relaxation. All right, don't grip the pick. If you are, go to a thinner pick. It'll help take some of the curse off the strumming. Okay, so we're just gonna go nice and.

Slow. One and two.

And. Okay, what people don't understand, just continue to do down ups. Is when they were just doing 1, 2, 3, 4. Look at my hand. It has to move up in between the.

Strum. So it's one.

And. And so all you're doing now is you're strumming on the up. Okay, so let's start on the chord change. Now we're gonna go from G to E.

Minor. So we got 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1, 2, 3.

4. Good. One more time. Then we'll pick up the spe. Here's the speed. Ready? One more time. Okay, now, for me, there was no difference in the slow strum in the fast strum. Now, for some of you, if you're just getting into doing up strums, you might have felt your flat forearm tense up or your whole arm tense up. And that's totally normal. You're just not used to doing this type of motion yet. And as you get more experience, that will start to naturally relax. Okay? So this strumming pattern is going to be the basis for our next drumming pattern, which we're going to build off of. This next one is harder. It's the same strumming pattern, but instead we're going to use all downs. Now, this is great for rock music. It's a little bit more aggressive. Okay? So we have to be quicker because now we're not doing down.

Ups. 1 and 2 and 3 and.

4. And now with this strum doing all downs, same time, you might hear it's very dark. So all I'm. I'm not strumming the entire chord. Oh, okay. You can do that in strumming. You don't have to strum the entire chord. Typically on an up strum, people ask me all the time, are you strumming all the chord or all the strings? No, I'm not strumming all the strings of the chord. I'm usually only catching the bottom three or four. That's why up strums have a much brighter sound than down strums. Now in this case, we're just doing all downs and I'm intentionally ignoring the bottom three strings as best as possible. Okay, so I'm gonna get a very dark.

Sound. So it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2. And now to E minor 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and.

1 and back to.

G. 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and.

4. It's a very cool sound. Now this can also get very fast and the tendency again is to tighten up the hand. So ready? Here we.

Go.

Faster. 1 and 2, 3.

4. Okay, so you can see it can get progressively fast. So that's a great rhythm for rock strumming. Now that's something where, you know, you might start and you feel good and then you get like six, seven, eight measures in, and then your hand starts to get tighter and stiffen. It might even get tired if you're not used to doing that. But very, very great overall strumming pattern for a rock style song. So the next strumming pattern I have written down here is a mixture of downs and ups. We're sticking with the, the eighth note strumming pattern because I'm going to prepare you for the next pattern, which is what we call a syncopated strumming pattern. Now, syncopated rhythms, I teach more in level six of my seven level guitar system, so that would be something to come later. But hey, maybe you're up for the challenge here. Let's start with this one, which is a little more around, like level three. Okay, so we're going to go back to our G chord and this one's going to be one, two and three and.

Four. One, two and three and.

Four. Or down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up.

Down. Great. Overall standard strumming pattern that you can use for For a lot of guitar songs. And you can play that one fast, you could play it slow. So whenever you're learning a new strumming pattern, just try it on a single chord, then jump to the chord progression. So we're going to go to, from G to E minor. Okay, we got one, two and three and.

Four. One, two and three and four. 1, 2 and 3 and 4. 1, 2 and 3 and four. One on.

Your. Okay, let's try picking up the speed just a little bit. One, two, Here we go. As you can see, the strumming is relaxed. It sounds good. If your guitar is not sounding good, if you're like Lauren, when you're strumming, your guitar just sounds so much better than mine. Again, it's probably the tension in the hand. I mentioned earlier in the lesson that you could go to a thinner pick. Now the thinner pick will take some of the curse off. Okay? So it can, it can make the guitar, guitar sound better if you've got a very, very stiff hand. The thing is, because it's so, it's so flimsy. It's like little, little flimsy pick. You. We will hear the pick flap noise just a little bit. So I prefer something like. So this is, I believe this is 0.5 millimeters. And the one I'm using here is 0.73. Just to give you some, some different sizing. I like 0.73 for strumming. 0.88, those, those are good ones. If I'm doing a lot of strumming very, very fast, like 16th note strumming, I'll. I'll go to the slightly thinner pick. So syncopated rhythm is when we're missing a down strum. So remember in the beginning I was like the down strum. That is the foundation of your strumming. You've gotta, you gotta lock in on that down strum because if you don't, your timing in your strumming is always going to be off. Now here we're missing one of the down strums. So how do we maintain our timing? Well, the timing is in your hand. It's in your strumming here. Remember, my hand, whether I'm hitting the strings or not, is constantly doing this down, up motion. Okay? It's constantly going down, up, down, up, down, up, whether I hit the string or not. So in this pattern it's going to be down, down, up, up, down, up. It's one, two and, and four. And so we're missing the three. There is no down strum. On the three. But your hand, this is what trips people up. The hand is still going down on the three. We're just not hitting the strings. Okay, so it's down, down, up.

Up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down.

Up. And I'm over exaggerating the three right now just to show you, like, I'm still strumming down on 3. So if I went 1, 2.

And 3, and 4, and 1, 2, and 3,and.

4. And now I just remove the.

3. 1, 2, and m4. And 1, 2, and.

M4. And down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down.

Up. So see, on the three, I'm still doing a down strum with my guitar. Okay, so here it is. Let's give it a try together. Ready? 1, 2, 3.

4. Down, down, up, up, down, up. Down, down, up, up, down.

Up. Okay, let' Ready to E minor. Back to G. Okay, back to E minor. Okay. And this is one you can also do very, very fast. I think songs like Wagon Wheel. This is a great song for, you know, a song like that. This is the cliche strumming pattern that everyone uses on songs. And this is usually the strumming pattern that students come to me and they're like, I just keep doing this one strumming pattern over and over again, and I feel like I can do nothing else on the guitar. And that's where usually they'll take, like, my expressive rhythm and strumming course or something like that to. To get themselves out of their comfort zone. Because it's such a versatile and useful strumming pattern that everyone uses it for almost every single song when they're like. But they feel stuck sometimes. So let's pick up the speed on this one just a little bit. Okay, I'm gonna do one measure of G, one measure of E minor. 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so kind of the next level after 8th notes is 16th notes. So I'm just going to give you a couple simple 16th notes drumming patterns. But they really help your guitar playing come to life a lot more when you start getting into 16th notes, which is. Which I would consider more. Very late beginner, early intermediate for 16th notes. But we're going to just build on what we did before. All right, so our strumming pattern that I'm going to be doing here, it's one, two, and a three, four, and a one, two, and a three comma four, and a. Great for ballads, great for slow songs. Something like hey Jude, Let It Be, all my slow Beatles songs, you know, I use it on stuff Like Heart and Gold, Lots of songs can use the strumming pattern. So it's basically down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, 1, 2, and A, 3, 4, and A. And you just see if you'll notice, watch my strumming hand when I hit the one, because I'm going one and then there's nothing between one and two. Watch my strumming hand. It does not stop moving. Just because I'm not hitting the strings. My hand is keeping the.

Time. So it's down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down.

Up. And that's something that's not going to be intuitive right off the bat, but the more strumming you do, your hand is going to start feeling the rhythm, and this becomes your metronome. This becomes your timekeeper. Is your hand all right? And to give you one more very cool strum to build off of, I think of for this song, the song that always comes to mind if I Die young. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and a 3 and 4 and. But on this we talked about earlier about you don't always have to strum all the strings. So we're just going to be playing the bass note. So it's going to be bass, bass, down, down, up. Bass.

Bass. Down, down.

Up. So I'm just hitting the bass note or the lowest string of the.

Chord. Down, down, down, down.

Up. Bass.

Bass. Down, down.

Up. Very, very cool. Very, very cool. And, you know, if you put it over a chord progression, we'll do like, G, E minor, C, D. It gives it really cool movement. And each of those chords was only two.

Beats. 1 and 2 and a 3 and 4 and a 1 and 2 and a 3 and four.

And. Just sounds really cool. Really starts making your guitar come to life, and you feel like a real guitar player, a real strummer. So if you enjoyed this lesson, I highly recommend you go watch the video right over there, where I'm going to take one single strumming pattern, and I'm going to show you how you can play it in seven different ways. And they all sound completely different from one rhythm. Okay, seven strumming patterns from one rhythm. Go check out that video right.