Basic Guitar Strumming Patterns

Learning how to strum a guitar is an essential part of guitar playing. By learning how to strum a guitar, you can use the guitar as an accompaniment to sing or impress friends in a gathering. Learning rhythms is part and parcel of developing yourself as a complete and well-balanced musician and hence, never overlook the importance of learning rhythm. This lesson will be focused on learning some basic rhythm patterns as well as strumming these guitar rhythms in tempo.

Rhythm Timing and Notation

Before we delve deeper into the lesson, I would like to explain some basic music theories and notations in music related to rhythm playing. In general, popular music has a 4/4 time signature. In layman’s term, this simply means that each bar of music has 4 beats. What do I mean? Listen to any popular songs on the radio and count with the drum beat. Chances are you are able to count 1 , 2, 3, 4 naturally. For a start, most of the stuff you are going to learn here is in 4/4 timing.

Just remember : 4 beats in each bar!

In rhythm guitar playing, rhythm slashes are typically used to denote how to strum a pattern. The rhythm slash looks like normal standard notations except that the heads of the notes are flat instead of rounded. This table shows the common notation used in deciphering rhythm playing.

Now, let’s start with something really simple. Use a metronome and set it to 80 bpm in 4|4 timing. Listen to beat and count 1, 2, 3, 4 in sync with the metronome. Make this a habit and you will soon get the rhythm naturally.

Next, hold a C open chord and strum the guitar in the direction as shown by the arrows. Hint: Tap your feet together with the beat when you strum 1, 2, 3, 4.This will help you stay in time greatly. Simple? Let’s do something simple again before we move to more complicated stuff. Set your metronome to 80 bpm as per normal. Tap to the beat with your foot. Count “1” when the heel of your foot is down and “&” when the heel of your foot is up, so on and so forth. Repeat this exercise using the C major chord strumming in a down-up down-up pattern.

Useful Hints

The hardest part of learning rhythm guitar is learning the strumming patterns and maintaining a steady and firm tempo. So, make sure you always listen and play with a metronome! Some other hints to playing rhythm guitar well:

The strumming motion should come from the rotation of your wrist (NOT elbow)

The choice of pick should be something that you are comfortable with. I would recommend using a medium gauge hardness pick. When holding the pick, do not show too much of the pick when strumming or there will be insufficient grip and cause the pick to move around.

Best results for strumming the guitar is to play directly over the sound hole.

Make sure that all the strings that are played ring clearly.

Do not strum too hard as this often creates an awful rattling sound.

Here are 2 very common strumming patterns that you will hear in guitar rhythms.

Download .gtp5 or .mp3 file ( Right-click  Save Target as... )

Play the .mp3 file and hear how the guitar rhythm should sound like. Then try and play it out. When you are able to repeat the rhythm consistently with no mistakes, you can go ahead and experiment playing the rhythm with different chord progressions. For example, you can try strumming the patterns to this progressions.

| A minor | C major | F major | G Major |

Play around a little and have fun with different progressions that you can come up with. You can be creative here. Cheers! Until the next lesson.