Guitar Basic Strumming Patterns

Hi! I'm Nate Savage and today, I'm going to teach you some basic guitar strumming patterns. Now for your right hand, you're going to want to be really relaxed and use your wrist for most of the strumming. A good anecdote that I use to think about how to strum with my right hand is to pretend like you dip your finger some honey and you got a little feather on it and you're just trying to get it off, kind of like that. It’s a really good way to visualize a good technique for your right hand. So let’s learn just the regular quarter note pattern using all down strokes using G, C, and a D chord. So, let’s just get started— [Demonstration] Okay, one thing that you need to notice is on my right hand when I'm playing these chords on a G, I'm playing all six strings. On the C chord, I'm leaving the low E string out completely. On the D chord I'm leaving the bottom two strings to end the E out completely. I'm just playing the top four strings. So now that you have that one down, let’s add a little bit to its progression. Let’s add some up strokes and play all eight notes [Demonstration] Okay now that you’ve got that down, that’s a real good strumming pattern to think about the technique I was using earlier while I'm having a really relaxed hand. Let’s try something a little bit harder and we’re going to use a G, a D with an F# in the base just take your thumb and put it on the 2nd fret right here on the lower E string and then grab an E minor, and then we’re going to grab a C. I'm going to play it for you and then I’ll break down with the right hand just doing real quick. [Demonstration] Okay, this strumming pattern is just a different series of up and down, so I’ll slow it way down and you can see what my right hand is really doing. You’re going to go— [Demonstration] And then you're going to go down up down so you get three more strums in there— [Demonstration] So you're going to have seven strums total. [Demonstration] Go to the next chord, the E minor and the C. And that’s all that is. Just break it down really slow and think about it in a group of four and then a group of three. This next pattern we’re going to do is just a G a D and a C. If you're going to use 16th notes with your right hand so it’s going to be a little bit faster strumming than the pattern that we did before. Let me show it to you and then I’ll explain exactly what I'm doing. [Demonstration] Okay, listen to the like 3 Doors Down or band like that you probably heard the strumming pattern, something like it before. So what you're going to do is take your right hand and play four 16th notes rather quickly and you know shut the strings up and mute them with your right hand, and then go to your D chord. Do the exact same thing and then go to your C chord and do the exact same thing again. Okay, there’s a last progression that I'm going to show you. You're going to use a G, that D with F# in the base again, an E minor, and then a C. And let me play it for you real quickly and then I’ll show what I'm doing with the strumming on the right hand. [Demonstration] Okay, so basically all I'm doing with my right hand is giving a down stroke then coming and giving you four strokes, then repeating that. There's pauses in between. So— [Demonstration] Change to your next chord. [Demonstration] Go to your E minor and then your C. So, think about the strumming patterns and listen to them in music that you like and you’ll start to be able to recognize them and make up your own variations, and pick out the strumming patterns and songs that you like. You’ll find that once you learn I think there are 10 or 15 strumming patterns that everything will start coming through a lot easier.