11th April 2022 

How To Strum - An Introduction to Strumming

To some people, strumming the guitar comes naturally. They don’t have to think too much about the strumming pattern they choose for a particular song – they just pick it up instinctively.

For others, it’s not obvious which strumming rhythm to use, and how to create that rhythm.

I guess first of all, I should clarify what I mean by ‘strumming’. A right-handed guitarist will form chords with the fingers of their left hand, and play the strings with their right hand, often holding a pick (also known as a plectrum) between their thumb and forefinger, which they use to strike the strings. The action of the right hand is called ‘strumming’ – hitting the strings in a rhythmic fashion.

For many chords, you will strum all six strings. For others you will play five strings (omitting the 6th string) and for others you will strum only 4 strings (also omitting the 5th string).

Most strums are based around 8th notes (or ‘quavers’ as we say in the UK). In 4/4 time there are four main beats, sometimes known as ‘crotchets’, in each the bar. The bar can be broken down further into eight half-beats. Think of the four beats of the bar as “One and Two and Three and Four and”, with the ‘ands’ being the in-between 8th notes or quavers.

When you strum you can either strum downwards (from the 6th string to the 1st string) – known as a ‘down-strum; or you can strum upwards, known as an ‘up-strum’.

In this blog I’m going to give some examples of commonly used strumming patterns, all based around 8th notes.

In each of my examples, I’ll show the 8th notes as dashes, and indicate whether there is a down-strum, an up-strum or no strum for that 8th note. I’ll also show the rhythm in musical notation form, for those of you who might find that helpful. And for Examples 3 and 6 I have included an audio clip of two bars of strumming.

I hope it’s helpful!

In this article I have only looked at 4/4 rhythms, and I have not introduced semi-quavers (16th notes). Maybe I’ll look at that another time – Oasis are a rich source of 16th note strums!

Meanwhile, and to finish off, I found this video online that I like. It’s quite simple, but well explained and illustrated. As well as having some strums I haven’t mentioned, it includes some useful additional techniques such as muting:

5 Essential Strumming Patterns - Beginner Guitar Lessons - Bing video 

Credit goes to Nate Savage, who created this video lesson.

Matt G, 11/04/2022