Lauren Bateman teaches a percussive strumming pattern for Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You." Learn muted down strokes and eighth-note timing, then apply it to the song's D-G-A-C progression. The bridge switches to held notes instead.
Well, I don't know why I came here tonight I got a feeling that something ain't right I'm so scared I can't get off of my chair and I'm wondering if I'll get down the stairs.
I hope you guys are going to get excited because if you could hear from the intro, we're going to be getting percussive with our rhythm, and I'm going to show you step by step how to build up to this pattern. So let's get into it.
So if you guys don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman, and I take intricate things like stuck in the middle with you, and I break them down and I make them simple step by step so that you can work your way up to it. So let's do that with this strumming pattern. And the foundation is the most important part. So the foundation for this is the timing. It's an eighth note strumming pattern. What does that mean? One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and. And that's going to be played down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Okay, so try that again with me. Very slow. We just want to get the timing down because if the timing's off, the rest of it's going to sound bad. So it's going to be 1, 2, nice and slow. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3, and 4.
1 and 2.
That's great. So now we have the foundation for this rhythm. And what we're going to do is we're going to work on muting some of these strums, and then we're going to add one of them back in. But I'm going to show you how to do it all step by step, like I said. So we're going to take that pattern, and when you do a down strum, I still want you to pretend like you're going to do a down strum, but just strum into your strings. And you might hear. You might hear the strings buzzing a little bit. That's okay. And we can get more percuss. Percussive if we want to. But for now, I just want you to gently tap the side of your hand. Okay. Right here, the side of your hand right on the strings, just to mute them. Let's go back to that D chord. So it's going to be down, up, up, up, up. Now, Lauren, how many strings am I hitting? You're probably only catching the bottom Three strings on this. So it's down is you tapping the strings and then up 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And now if you find your hand is like jerking on those up strums, just relax, okay? If you need help with your up strums, put a link to a video over here that will help you developing that skill that you can go check out after the fact. So it's 1 and 2 and don't forget to breathe.
Okay? So that is the timing of it. And then you can work on speeding it up. And as you speed it up, you're not going to worry about your hands so much. So if you whack the guitar, that's okay. All right, so it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1.
All right, so that's the next foundation. What we're going to do is we're going to add back in the down strum on the one. So it's going to be one and two and.
And.
One and two.
Ok.
Now, you'll notice my down strums are pretty aggressive. I'm getting more of the strings, and this is something you're gonna have to start slow and then speed up over time to get the full process together. The great thing about this strumming pattern is it can be applied to lots of other cool songs, such as Proud Mary Took a Good Job in the City.
Woman for a Man Every Night and Day.
As you can see, it's a very versatile str strumming pattern that you can practice and use. Now we do something different on the bridge, but when we get there, I'll explain what's going to happen. I just want to talk about the chord progression here. So we're basically doing four measures of a D chord. So we hang on that D chord for a while, and then we have two measures of a G chord. Then we go D, A, C, G, and then we're back on D. So if I took that whole first verse, it would sound like this.
Well, I don't know why I came at night I got the feeling that somebody Something ain't right I'm so scared I can fall off my chair and I don't know if I'll get down the stairs.
To the left of me Jokers to the right Here I am stuck in the middle with you well, I'm stuck in the middle with you.
So you can hear how this works throughout that entire verse. Now there's A bridge section that comes through where we lose our percussive strumming. And then we hold out some notes at the end. So everything is two measures. All right. For two measures, sometimes we're strumming, sometimes we're not. So the bridge, we're going to start with the G chord. Twice we've got.
Well, you started out with nothing and you're probably over something, man.
To D twice, back to G. And.
Your friends, they all come crawling, slap you on the back and say.
1, 2, 3, 4, please.
2, 3, 4. So those last two chords, we're still playing two measures. We're just holding them so it's a D chord. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. To an A7. 1, 2, 3,4. 1, 2, 3, Four. And then right from there you go right back into.
Now, if you guys have fun with this percussive rhythm and are looking to really develop your strumming and become more expressive in your guitar playing. Well, I do have an entire strumming course called Expressive Rhythm. There's a link in the description below. You guys can go check that out. We do more of this type of percussive type strumming. I get into accented rhythms, 16 note rhythms. Really, really intricate stuff, and kind of what separates the okay rhythm guitar players from the really good and great players. So if you guys are interested in learning more and taking your rhythm to the next level, go to the description below and check out my expressive rhythm strumming course.
