Guitar Lesson Seven
Strumming Patterns
Strumming patterns are pretty useful for guitar players! If you want to accompany yourself or another musician, strumming a regular pattern makes it easier to follow you, and if you can modify your pattern to match the “feeling” of the sound, it can sound great! It really just comes down to dividing up a measure (or a couple of measures) in to eights and strumming down on half of them and up on half of them. The fun part comes when you start leaving some strums out. Ironically, the more you leave out, the more interesting the pattern is to play and to listen to.
Your challenge: view the strumming exercise video. Download the strumming pattern pdf and complete the 8 exercises on the sheet. To start with, just go slowly and say the words “down” and “up” as you do that action.