Guitar strumming patterns: the method, then eight patterns

A strumming pattern is written as a row of downs and ups, and that way of writing it hides the one thing that makes it work: the strumming arm never stops. It swings down and up continuously, at the speed of the eighth notes, and the pattern only says which of those swings touch the strings. Learn that first and every pattern on this page becomes readable. Learn the patterns first and they stay a list of movements you have to remember. Below is the method, then eight patterns in order of difficulty, each one written on the same grid so you can see what changed.

How to strum a guitar: the arm never stops

Here is the whole thing in one image. Your strumming arm is a pendulum. It goes down, it comes back up, down, up, and it keeps going for as long as the song does. It does not wait, it does not hesitate, and it does not speed up to catch a stroke it is late for. A pattern is nothing more than the list of swings that are allowed to hit the strings. The others go past in the air.

This is the single biggest difference between a beginner's strumming and a player's, and it has nothing to do with speed or dexterity. A beginner moves when there is a note to play and stops when there is not, so every gap in the pattern becomes a small hole in the time. Keep the arm moving through the gaps and the time looks after itself.

What the hand and arm actually do

• The movement comes from the forearm rotating, with a loose wrist going along with it. The elbow does very little. If your whole arm is lifting from the shoulder, you are using about ten times the effort the job needs.
• Stay loose on the pick. Hold it firmly enough that it does not twist and no firmer. A tight grip drags the pick across the strings instead of letting it glance off them, which is where a scratchy sound comes from.
• Strum over the sound hole, or over the end of the neck. Close to the bridge the strings barely move and the sound goes thin and hard. Over the sound hole they are free and the chord opens up.
• The down stroke is not the up stroke's twin. Coming down, the pick starts at the thick strings and the chord sounds full. Going up, it starts at the thin ones and catches fewer strings, so it sounds lighter. That is correct and useful: it is what gives a pattern its shape.
• Count the swings out loud, not the strokes. Saying one and two and three and four and, while the arm goes down on each number and up on each and, keeps the two locked together.

Reading a pattern: D, U and the eighth-note grid

Every pattern below is written on the same grid, eight cells wide. The top row is the count, the bottom row is what your hand does in each cell. One bar of four beats, divided into eighth notes, which is what the pendulum is already doing.

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
. . . . . . . .

Three symbols, and only three.

• D is a down stroke, from the thick strings toward the thin ones. It can only ever land on a number, because that is where the arm is traveling downward.
• U is an up stroke, from the thin strings back toward the thick ones. It can only land on an and, for the same reason in reverse.
• A dot is a swing that happens without touching the strings. The arm goes exactly where it would have gone. Nothing sounds.

That constraint is worth sitting with, because it removes most of the guesswork. You never choose between a down and an up: the cell chooses for you. Numbers get downs, ands get ups. If you ever meet a pattern that asks for a down on an and, it is either written wrong or it is counting in sixteenth notes, which is a later problem.

Reading one out loud

Take the fourth pattern below as an example. Say the count, and say the word miss where the dot is: down, up, down, up, miss, up, down, up. Then say it again with the arm moving and the strings muted by your fretting hand, so you hear the rhythm without a chord getting in the way. Then put a chord under it. Three passes, in that order, and almost any pattern comes out on the first try.

Eight patterns, easiest first

Each one adds exactly one thing to the one before it. Play them in order, on a chord you do not have to think about, and move on only when the arm is still swinging evenly through the gaps. A pattern you can hold for sixteen bars is worth more than four you can start.

1. Four down strokes

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D . D . D . D .

The arm strums down on each beat and rises silently in between. It is quarter notes, it is the plainest thing on this page, and it is also the one you will go back to every time a song gets away from you. Your job here is to feel the four silent up swings, because they are the thing the next seven patterns are built on.

2. Eight eighth notes

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D U D U D U D U

Now every swing touches the strings. Nothing new happens in the arm, which is the point: you are hearing the movement you were already making. It drives hard and it fills everything, so it is not often the right choice in a song, but it is the best possible check that your pendulum is even. If the up strokes come out weaker than the downs, let them: they are meant to.

3. Down, down-up

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D . D U D . D U

The first pattern with a hole in it, and the first one that sounds like music rather than an exercise. Beats one and three get a bare down, beats two and four get a down with an up behind it. The arm is doing exactly what it did in pattern two, and two of its eight swings now miss. Say down, miss, down, up out loud while you play it.

4. One hole, on the third beat

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D U D U . U D U

Eight eighth notes with the third beat taken out. One missing stroke, and the whole bar tilts: the up stroke before the gap now carries across the hole, which is what a syncopation is. This is the gentlest way into that feeling, because everything else stays where it was. Keep the arm dead even through the gap or the beat will shorten itself without asking.

5. The one you will use most

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D . D U . U D U

Two holes, and a group of three strokes that comes out of them: up, down, up, across the end of the bar. If there is a default strumming pattern for an acoustic guitar with a voice over it, this is it. It leaves room on the third beat, it pushes forward into the fourth, and it works at almost any tempo. Count it as down, miss, down, up, miss, up, down, up, and expect it to take a few days rather than a few minutes.

6. Three, three, two

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D . . U . . D .

Three strokes in the bar, spaced three cells, three cells, two cells. Only the first and the last land on a beat; the middle one lands on the and of the second beat, so it is an up, and that is the whole character of the pattern. It is sparse, it leaves enormous room, and it is the figure behind a great deal of Latin and pop guitar. Hard to place at first and easy to keep once placed.

7. The offbeat

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
. U . U . U . U

Nothing on the beats, everything between them. Four up strokes, four silent downs, and a bar that floats instead of marching. This is the reggae and ska guitar sound in its simplest form, and it is the single best test of whether your arm is really independent of your ear: the moment you lose the silent down strokes, the pattern flips over and you find yourself playing pattern one. Tap your foot on the beats. The foot is the proof.

8. Down-up on the strong beats

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
D U D . D U D .

A down with an up right behind it on beats one and three, a bare down on two and four. Played with even eighth notes it is a decent pop pattern, and it is the mirror image of pattern three: the pairs have moved from the weak beats to the strong ones, which is enough to change where the bar seems to lean.

It is also the pattern most often taught as the swing one, and that is worth untangling, because the shuffle is not in the pattern. You get it by leaning the whole grid: every pair of cells becomes long then short, so each up stroke arrives late. Nothing on the page moves. Any of the eight patterns above can be played that way, and this one simply makes the lean easiest to hear because it has two pairs in it. The next section is about that one change, because it is the only thing on this page that the grid cannot show you.

Counting out loud

Counting out loud feels silly and it is not optional. One and two and three and four and, said at the speed of your arm, ties the pattern to the bar instead of to your muscle memory. The test is simple: if you cannot say the count while you play, you are not keeping time, you are repeating a shape and hoping it comes out even.

Then check it against something that does not get tired. Our online metronome does more than click: it can subdivide the beat so you hear the eighth notes your arm is swinging, accent the first beat of the bar so you know where you are, and drop a share of the clicks so you find out whether the pulse is yours or the machine's. Start slower than feels necessary, around sixty beats per minute, and play four bars in a row. If your first beat still agrees with the click at the end of the fourth bar, the pattern is holding.

Going the other way, when a recording is in your head and you want to know how fast it actually is, tap along on the tap tempo page and read the number. Useful for two reasons: it tells you where to set the metronome, and it usually tells you that the song is slower than you thought. Most patterns that feel impossible are being attempted thirty beats too fast.

A ten minute practice order

1. Arm alone, no strings, counting out loud. Thirty seconds. You are checking that the pendulum is even before you ask it to do anything else.
2. The pattern with the strings muted by your fretting hand lying flat across them. You hear the rhythm with no chord in the way, and any unevenness is obvious.
3. The pattern on one chord, for sixteen bars without stopping. Not four bars. Sixteen is where the arm either settles or does not.
4. The pattern across two chords, changing on beat one. Expect it to fall apart here, and expect to slow down. The pattern was never the hard part.

Swing and shuffle

Up to here, the eight cells of the grid have been equal: the and sits exactly halfway between two beats. Swing moves it. The first half of the beat gets longer and the second half gets shorter, so the up stroke arrives late, closer to the next down than to the one before it. The pattern on the page does not change at all. Only the spacing does, and the grid has no way of drawing that, which is why this section exists.

The way to find it is not arithmetic. Say the word together, out loud, once per beat: to-gether, to-gether, to-gether, to-gether. The two syllables are uneven, the first one long, and that is the swing. Now let your arm follow the syllables, down on to and up on gether. Shuffle and swing are the same idea with different amounts of lean, and no two players lean exactly alike, which is part of why it sounds human.

Two practical notes. A metronome set to straight eighth notes will fight you here, so subdivide in three instead, or let it click the beats only and keep the subdivision in your own arm. And swing is never half applied: either the whole bar leans or none of it does. A pattern that swings on beats one and two and goes straight on three and four does not sound half swung, it sounds wrong.

From a pattern to a song

A pattern on its own is an exercise. What turns it into playing is a chord progression underneath it, and the gap between the two is wider than it looks: the hard part of a song is almost never the strumming pattern, it is keeping the pattern going while the fretting hand moves.

Here is a grid to try it on. Four bars, one chord per bar, all four shapes open, and no barre anywhere. It is the loop a great deal of pop guitar sits on, which means the pattern is the only variable left.

| C | G | Am | F |

Each vertical line is a bar line, so each chord lasts one full bar and the pattern repeats inside it. Four bars, then back to C. Play it round and round until the change to F stops being an event.

Work in that order too. Start with pattern one, four bare down strokes, until the changes land on beat one without a hiccup. Only then put a richer pattern on top. If the pattern breaks at a chord change, go back a pattern rather than slow the song down to a crawl: a simple pattern in time sounds like music, and a complicated one that stumbles does not.

For the chords themselves, the basic guitar chords page writes out the open shapes finger by finger, which is where nearly every strummed song lives. Barre chords come later and they change the question rather than the pattern, because the fretting hand is suddenly busy. And for songs chosen by how hard they actually are rather than by reputation, our list of easy guitar songs for beginners gives each one a level.

Two last things, both of which cost nothing. Tune up before you start, on the online guitar tuner if you do not have a clip-on: a strumming pattern on an out of tune guitar sounds like a mistake in your hand, and you will go looking for it there. And if you are reading the song from a tab, remember that a tab tells you where to put your fingers and says almost nothing about rhythm, which is covered in how to read guitar tabs. The pattern is the part you bring yourself.

Who made this

Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. The eight patterns on this page are the ones that come up in his lessons, in the order they come up, and they are written as generic figures rather than attached to particular records, so that the pattern is what you learn. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way. There is more on who he is and why this site exists in about Guitar Social Club.