Guitar Strumming Patterns for Beginners

What is the most common guitar strumming pattern?

Down, down-up, up-down-up (D DU UDU) is the most common strumming pattern in 4/4. It fits a huge number of pop, folk and rock songs because the missed strum on beat 3 gives it a lift.

Count it out loud: “1, 2 &, (3) &, 4 &”. Your hand still moves down on beat 3 but misses the strings – that miss is what makes the pattern bounce. Learn it slowly with the player above on G and C first, then try G, D, Em, C.

What are the easiest strumming patterns for beginners?

Four down strums per bar is the easiest pattern, then down-up on every beat (eight even strums), then down, down-up. Move on to the folk strum and boom-chuck once chord changes feel easy.

Each slot is an quaver. Press Try it to load a pattern into the player.

How do you strum a guitar?

Hold the pick between the thumb and the side of the index finger, with only the tip showing. Strum from the wrist over the sound hole: down across all the strings in the chord, up across the top three or four. Keep the arm relaxed and the hand moving all the time.

1. Grip the pick lightly: firm enough not to drop it, loose enough to let it flex.
2. Move from the wrist, like shaking water off your hand, not from the elbow.
3. Down strums start from the lowest string of the chord (the 5th string for C, the 4th for D).
4. Up strums only need to catch the top three or four strings.
5. A gap in the pattern is a miss, not a stop: keep the hand moving.

• 3 2 0 0 0 3
• x 3 2 0 1 0
• x x 0 2 3 2
• 0 2 2 0 0 0
• x 0 2 2 1 0
• x x 3 2 1 1
• x 0 2 2 2 0
• 0 2 2 1 0 0
• x x 0 2 3 1

Chord boxes show the six strings upright, low E on the left. Numbers in the dots are fingers (1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 little); o = open string, × = do not play. The numbers under each box are the frets from low E to high E.

How do you count strumming patterns?

Count “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” in 4/4. Down strums land on the numbers and up strums on the “&”s, so the hand moves down on every number and up on every “&”, whether or not it touches the strings.

In 3/4 count “1 & 2 & 3 &”. In 6/8 count six even beats, “1 2 3 4 5 6”, and lean on 1 and 4. If you lose your place, go back to four downs for a bar, then add the ups again. See beats, bars and time signatures for how time signatures work.

What is a boom-chuck strum?

Boom-chuck is a bass-and-strum pattern: pick the chord’s lowest note (the root) on beat 1, strum on beat 2, pick another bass note (usually the 5th) on beat 3 and strum on beat 4. It sounds like a bass player and a guitarist at once.

Choose “Boom-chuck” in the player to hear it. In 3/4 the same idea becomes boom-chuck-chuck: bass note on 1, strums on 2 and 3.

A 10-minute strumming practise plan

1. 2 minutes: four downs on G at 70 beats per minute.
2. 2 minutes: down-up on every beat, changing between G and C every bar.
3. 3 minutes: down, down-up, then the folk strum, on G, D, Em, C.
4. 3 minutes: play an easy guitar song with the strum you like best.

Self-assessed Tick off each step when you can do it twice without stopping.

To change chords on time, lift the fretting hand on the last up strum of the bar: it is fine if that strum hits open strings. Classfern’s free tools on lessonplanner.info run in your browser; the beginner guitar chords page has a strum-along with drums and bass.