Hi, I’m Franklin Taggart. I’m a guitar teacher and a guitar player. I’d like to show you how to develop a strum pattern for the guitar. The key to making a strum pattern work is to keep your hand moving in a uniform motion, down, up, down, up, down, up, down and your motion is going to be with the rhythm of the song that you want to play.
So, your hands always are going to be going down on the rhythm that you count, so if you've got four beats in a measure, you count four; one, two, three, four. Naturally, if you’re going down on the beat, your hand comes up in between, and so when you’re strumming, what happens is, you’re going to be primarily doing all down strokes with your right hand [demonstration].
For the Blues song that we’re going to learn, you’re going to be learning a slightly different pattern and the way that it works as you’re going to go down twice and then you’re going to go down, up, down, at the end of that.
So, here's how it works. You’re going to go [demonstration] down, down, down, up, down, down, down, down, up down, down, down, down, up down, down, down, down, up, down. When you’re first learning a strum pattern, it's helpful to say out loud the direction that you like your hand to move. Your hand will follow that direction very easily. It's the easiest way to learn a strum pattern and memorize it is to say out loud what you’re playing.
So, that's the strum pattern that we’re going to be using for the Blues song that we learned today. Thanks so much.
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