Strumming Patterns & Ties Part Four

As you can see there literally are endless options with all the strumming patterns but our goal here is not to explore them all from a mathematical point of view but to learn new patterns that will actually make a difference in to your acoustic guitar playing.

Like I mentioned before “the guitarist with the best rhythm chops always wins the battle!” (The battle is against boring guitar playing by the way.)

So in an effort to develop rhythm chops of steel let’s continue our journey by looking at strumming patterns that make use of ties from a quarter note to an eight note as well as multiple ties in a bar.

Strumming Pattern 01

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Consider for a moment that when using subdivisions of eight notes like we’ve been doing up to now you can easily fit in 8 notes per bar. But as you probably noticed it’s not always desirable and get pretty cluttered right?

Well the strumming pattern above only has four notes but they sound awesome when used with that particular syncopation. That’s the name of the game. Less is more and if you use open sounding rhythms like this it make a seriously cool impact on your playing. I wish I knew this when I started to learn acoustic guitar.

Also note that even though the very first strumming pattern we looked at also contained 4 notes this one is much more hip sounding. Why? Well the first strumming pattern had all 4 down strokes on all 4 beats which is pretty boring.

It’s kind of like the nerd at a party who keeps stating the obvious and doesn’t necessarily have any cool insights of his own. Using a strumming pattern like this is like having a totally different perspective and profound insight to a conversation where, once everyone hears what you have to say they all go “Wow, that’s cool!”

So in order to not be THAT guy get your head and hands around some of these patterns.

Strumming Pattern 02

This one kind of sounds like Hava Nagila?

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Strumming Pattern 03

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Strumming Pattern 04

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Strumming Pattern 05

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Strumming Pattern 06

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How cool is this rhythm with only 3 strokes for the entire bar?

Have these patterns been helpful?

Let me know in the comments below. Once you’ve left your comment head on over to this other site to get more acoustic guitar lessons.

Charl Coetzee