Your first 3 strumming patterns

The pendulum rule

Your strumming hand swings like a pendulum and never stops: down on the beats (1, 2, 3, 4), up between the beats, on the “ands.”

To skip a strum, you don’t stop moving: you just swing past the strings without touching them. That steady motion is what gives you the groove, even when you’re not hitting every strum.

Reading a strumming pattern

Each bar is split into eight slots: 1, and, 2, and, 3, and, 4, and. The beats have an orange background.

• ↓: downstroke, from the low strings to the high strings.
• ↑: upstroke. No need to hit all six strings: the top three or four are plenty.
• ·: your hand swings past without touching the strings.

Hit “Listen”: the slot being played lights up with an orange outline, and each bar moves on to the next chord.

Pattern 1: the march

Four downstrokes, one per beat: that’s the pattern from the lesson The pulse. Use it to really feel the upward motion between strums, without touching the strings.

Pattern 2: the pendulum

Eight strums, alternating down and up. The upstroke is lighter: it just brushes the high strings. If your wrist tenses up, lower the tempo and relax your shoulder.

Pattern 3: the pop strum

Down, down-up, up-down-up. On the “and” of 1 and on beat 3, your hand swings past without touching. You’ll hear it in thousands of pop and folk songs.

To lock it in, say it out loud while you play: “down, down-up, up-down-up.”

Put them to music

Your first four chords, one bar each, with the pop strum. The chord change happens during the last upstroke: the perfect spot for the open strum from the lesson Changing chords without stopping.

You’ve got it when…

• Your strumming hand never stops, even on the strums you skip
• You play the pendulum at 70 bpm without tensing up
• You play G, D, Em, C with the pop strum at 60 bpm