Strumming Patterns for Guitar: Lesson 3

Hey gang, Scott from ScottPerryMusician.com with the third in the series of strumming patterns for rhythm guitar playing. And this is going to be the last video in this series. It's December, next time we're going to get to some Christmas tunes and get some of that into your repertoire. But for the last video in this series, we're going to talk about some basic patterns that you can use for your country playing, whether it's bluegrass, old-time, gospel, honky-tonk, all the country genres. Employ this kind of rhythm technique. And it all comes down to what's called the boom-chuck. And the boom-chuck— we'll just use a really simple 3-chord pattern. We're going to go G for 2 measures, C for 2 measures, D major, or you can set this D dominant 7th for 2 measures, and then back to G. If you're to play this in a 2-time, you'd hear something that sounds a lot like Hank Williams' Your Cheatin' Heart, the A section of that song. Song. And so a boom-chuck with what's called a monotonic bass, okay, which just means we're going to hit one bass note for each chord. On the G chord, it's going to be a 6th string bass. On a C, a 5th string bass. On a D, a 4th string bass.

And so boom-chuck with the monotonic bass is going to be boom-chuck, boom-chuck, boom-chuck, boom-chuck. On a C, boom-chuck, boom-chuck, boom-chuck. D7.

You could put a D major there if you wanted to, and then back to G. Now the boom is kind of like a bounce really off of the bass string, and sometimes I'll hit more than one bass string. The chuck can be any number of strings. It really is up to your discretion. You can pluck all the way, you know, through all 6 strings of a G, through 4 strings, 3 strings. It's really something that you need to kind of just experiment with and decide what sounds good to you. And it's something that will change depending on the context— how many other guitar players are playing rhythm, what the lead instrument is playing, how loud the lead instrument is, or if it's somebody singing. But the bounce, the boom is like a bounce. You're going to bounce off that bass note, get some air, and then the chuck is a snapping through the strings that you intend to hit. It's almost like you're shedding water from your hand after you've washed them under the garden hose or trying to get a match out after you've lit the campfire. So If I were to do that with a count all the way through the progression once again, it would be boom, Chuck, 2, 2, C, 2, C, 2, D, 2, D, 2, G, 2, G, 2. Now you can embellish that sss— with just a slight upstroke where you're hitting 1 or 2 treble strings on your way up. That's called a boom chicka. And so with the count again it would sound like this: 1-and-a-2-and-a-jjummm—and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-2-and-a-4-and-a-2-and-a-5-and-a-2-and-a-ssss—and-a-2-and-a-7-and-a-2-and-a-8-and-a-2-and-a-jjummm. So that's boom-chuck and boom-chicka. Now if you were playing in a 3-time, like say Amazing Grace, you'd employ what's called a boom-chuck-chuck.

Boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck.

Okay, you could also put a boom-chuck-chucka or chuck-chicka, I guess. That would be the first 8 measures of a tune like "Amazing Grace" that's in a 3-time. The next thing I want to introduce, and I'm running through this pretty fast, and this is stuff that sometimes will take 1 or 2 complete lessons with a beginner guitar player in a face-to-face situation. I'm just introducing the ideas, and hopefully you can go over this and start employing it into your playing. But if you have any questions, feel free to go to scottperrymusician.com. I have all sorts of lesson formats that you can choose. If you're close by and you want to set up a private lesson, that's fine. If you want to set up a Skype lesson or a video exchange lesson series, those are all options too. But this kind of stuff, you know, does take a little bit of practice, but it's something that I find pretty easily attainable and something, at least here in Floyd County, this kind of rhythm pattern will get you a lot of gigs and a lot of invitations back to the jam or open mic. So with the alternating bass, you've got choices with each individual chord. Instead of hitting the same bass note over and over, you're going to hit the original bass note in the G chord, the 6th string, and then you're going to choose a secondary bass note, uh, to, to play the second half of the measure. And the most common would be hitting the root of the chord and then the 5th of the chord. So on the G, it'd be G, the 6th string and the 4th string. On the C, it would be the 5th string, and then you'd rotate your 3rd finger up to the 6th string, 3rd fret to get the 5th of the chord. And then on the D chord, it's the 4th and the 5th string. Now you could add the boom chicka to that as well, but what it gives you is the sound of the upright bass. If I mute the strings just a little bit with my right hand, you get this sound. Sorry. Now, I accidentally hit the 5th string on a G chord one time there, and that's another option. You could hit the, the 6th string and then the 5th string, which gives you the 3rd of the chord. You could do that on the C too. I could hit the 5th string and then the 4th string on the C chord. Now, the D chord, don't really want to have a bass note that goes below the 4th string, so I'm kind of locked into that 4th, 5th. But if I were to do that, it would sound a little bit different. And there's no hard and fast rules. You can mix and match those bass notes. You can play monotonic for a chorus and then switch to a 1-5 type of bass line and then a 1-3. Or mix and match internally through a chord sequence or progression. It really just depends on, on how, on, on what you want it to sound like and, and what kind of variety you want to put in. But it's a, it's a great thing to experiment with and to just kind of find the sounds that sound really good to you. So the final thing that I want to introduce here is that you could also walk into each new chord by, for instance, G. If I hit that for— there's the first measure, second measure, I hit the boomshak for the first half, and then I walk to the C chord, and I just walk it on the open fifth, second fret fifth, third fret fifth, and then I lay down my C chord again. In the second measure of C, I hit the boomshak on the first half, to get to the D or D7 chord, I'm going to hit the 3rd fret, 4th fret of the 5th string, and then the open 4th string. And now as I go to the G, I'm going to hit the open 6th string, 2nd fret, 3rd fret. So again, that's a lot of information if you've never done this before, but it would sound like this. Boom-chuck, boom-chuck. Second measure, walk into C. Second half the measure, walk to D. Second measure of D, I walk to G. So in time and without really pre-thinking exactly which, you know, boom-chuck, boom-chicka alternating monotonic, what I'm going to do, I'll just play it so you can hear what it can sound like. So that very last thing is called the Flat Run, and that is actually a really fun thing to play and a really easy thing to play. It comes from the great old-time bluegrass picker Lester Flatt, who was a member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, and then later on had a career with Earl Scruggs, also from the Bluegrass Boys. The Flatt and Scruggs duo was one of the most popular outfits of its era. And he employed this thing that has since been called— come to be called the flat run or the flat lick. And all it is, is out of a G chord, you're going to hit the G note on the 6th string, then you're going to hit an open 5th string, 1st fret 5th string, 2nd fret 5th string, open 4th string, 2nd fret 4th string, open 4th string and then the open G, or you could come back and grab the G in the bass. If I were to pick it all, it would be like 1 and a 2 E and a 1, but oftentimes you'll see players kind of hammer on to the notes on the 5th string. Nice thing about this run is when you go to C, you can do the same exact pattern, just one string down, down one set of strings. So the bottom line is there's a lot of different ways that you can, that you can walk to different bass notes. Walk to different chords within a progression in country music and all the various types of country music. But those are some basic concepts to get you started, and it's— this is a really fun type of music to play, and a lot of the progressions are very, very simple, just 3 or 4 chord progressions in a lot of your country tunes, your old-time fiddle tunes, and that sort of thing. So it's a— those are great That's great repertoire to start experimenting and having fun with, with the country rhythm patterns that I've introduced here. So I hope you enjoy that, and if you have any questions, feel free to give me an email, or if you'd like to get updates on the free lessons or lesson openings, or the, again, the various lesson formats and opportunities, you can go to ScottPerryMusician.com. Please sign up for the newsletter. You'll get 2 emails a month that update you on all the things that are going on at ScottPerryMusician.com. But I really appreciate you checking out this video, and we'll look forward to seeing you again real soon. Thanks.