How To Play Guitar
Custom Search
Learn Guitar Strumming Patterns
Guitar Strumming Lesson (4 beats to a bar – 4/4 time)
| Down – Down up – Down up – Down |
This is the first ‘real guitar strumming pattern I learned to play (It works pretty well with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin in the Wind’).
The pattern is a little trickier to get the hang of because you are not repeating the same thing over and over again. It might help to count out loud, tap your foot or use our metronome to keep beat.
In addition to the guitar strumming pattern there are a few things you should start working on at this stage.
- As you play the pattern try and hit the first strum of each bar a little bit harder than the rest of the strums. If you change chords hit the first strum on each new chord a little bit harder also.
- Play all the notes on your down stroke but on your upstrokes practice only playing the first few strings.Think of it like this. The down stroke is the important one and you ‘happen’ to be catching a few strings on the upstroke as your hand returns to its starting position. This is important as playing full upstrokes are uncommon, tend to break your hand rhythm on faster songs and musically they sound odd.
Playing A Song With Your New Pattern
Once you have mastered the pattern above it is time to start using your new found strumming prowess and play a song – ‘Blowin in the Wind’ by Bob Dylan.
September 30, 2008 at 10:41 am | Learn Guitar Strumming | 1 comment
to get the hang of it choose your most challenging chord, hen play that chord with the pattern above, as soon as your done play the same pattern with a G, keep rotating through, G, then other, G, other, G,