Strumming and
strumming patterns
strumming
Strumming using a pick - or your fingers - is often one of the biggest challenges faced by beginner guitarists and requires patience and practise to master. The key factors you need for good strumming technique are:
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Keeping a relaxed motion in your arm and wrist with most of the movement coming from your wrist.
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A steady up and down motion whether you are striking the strings or not. Pausing your hand after a strum will throw out your timing.
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Try not to grip the pick too tightly as you want it to glide over the strings rather than getting stuck in them. Imagine the bristles of a paint brush that bends with the strings rather than forcing it to stay at a 90 degree angle. Using a pick with a bit of give is a good idea if you are just starting out.
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Tap your foot on the beat and/or count for each bar. Most of the songs you learn initially will be in 4/4 time meaning 4 beats to the bar. So we count to 4 over and over with our foot tapping on each number as we do a down strum.
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Follow these steps to practise strumming:
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Mute the strings by lightly covering them with your fretting hand fingers.
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Start with just down strums. Count to 4 over and over whilst doing a down strum and tapping your foot for each number. Be sure to bring your hand back up between each strum ready for the next one.
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When you are comfortable with this add up strums. These will happen between the numbers and we say ‘and’ each time we do this. Up strums are tricky at first so remember all of the technique rules above.
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Finally try coming up with your own 8th note strumming pattern by removing some of the strums whist still keeping the hand moving as if you were strumming.
strumming patterns
Strumming patterns can be visualised or written down in a number of ways. Below are 2 examples of the same 8th note strumming pattern in 4/4 time:
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The top row shows all of the available 8th notes we could strum in a bar. When counting the + is spoken as 'and' which in 4/4 time is usually an up strum.
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The 2nd row uses arrows to visualise the down and up strums.
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The 3rd row uses the letters D for down strums and U for up strums.
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This pattern therefore would require you to strum down for all of the down beats - numbers - and up for the upbeats after the 3 and 4.
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Give it a try and remember to keep the strumming hand moving up and down even when you are not hitting the strings i.e. the + after the 1st and 2nd beat.
strumming pattern examples
Here are another couple of examples of 8th note strumming patterns in 4/4 time. We refer to these as 8th note patterns because we are splitting each beat into 2 giving us 8 potential notes in each bar instead of 4.
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Watch out for the 2nd one as it takes away one of the up strums making it even more crucial to keep your strumming hand moving even when not striking the strings so you don't lose the timing. This strumming pattern is widely used in music and is a great pattern to use on a song if you are unsure of what to do.
