Basic 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 guitar rhythm. This lesson will be focused on learning some basic rhythm patterns as well as strumming them in tempo.

Basic 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. Generally, 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.

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

Basic Guitar Strumming Chord Patterns 2 & 3

Here are 2 very common strumming patterns that you will hear in basic rhythms. All of these examples are played with the C major chord.

Download .gtp5or .mp3 file ( Right-click  Save Target as... )

Download .gtp5or .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 basic rhythm consistently with no mistakes, you can go ahead and can try strumming the patterns to this progressions.

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

For rhythm 2: Download .gtp5or .mp3 file ( Right-click  Save Target as... )

For rhythm 3: Download .gtp5or .mp3 file ( Right-click  Save Target as... )

Play around a little and have fun with these rhythms. You are already moving towards your first steps to strumming the guitar. When you are comfortable with playing these rhythms, be sure to move onto more rhythms. One of the easiest ways to do this is to learn the rhythms of your favorite songs. (Hint: Use Guitar Pro 5's loop function and play around with the tempo).