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Chord Strums

Below you will see the 1st 3 chord strums that I give to my guitar students. They are the 4/4 strum, the 3/4 strum, and the rolling strum. When you listen to the examples below(forgive the sound quality), you will notice slight variations between them. Keep in mind that my strumming hand is moving at the same rate in each example. I will explain this below. I use the D chord for all 3 strums.

***Click on the flowing music icon for each of the 3 strums in order to hear them.***
*4/4 Strum*	*4/4 Strum With Intro*	*3/4 Strum*	*Rolling Strum*

After listening to the above examples, you may be wondering what I meant when I said that my strumming hand moves at a constant speed. Here is the explanation. When you are strumming the guitar at the beginning level, it is important that your strumming hand moves up and down over the strings at the same rate. Click on the "4/4 Strum With Intro" button up above to see what I am talking about. You will notice that at the beginning of "4/4 Strum With Intro", I am playing the strings on both the up and down strokes with my strumming hand and I am strumming at a constant speed. At the end of this example, my strumming hand is still at a constant speed. The reason why it doesn't sound like it is because I am not actually hitting the strings on every up and down motion. Sometimes I hit the string on the down stroke, sometimes on the upstroke, and sometimes both on the up and down stroke. Even though I am not hitting the strings on every stroke, I am still going through the motion with the up or down stroke to maintain the rhythm. Here are the patterns that I use for the 3 different strums.

4/4- Down Stroke, Down Stroke, Up Stroke, Up Stroke, Down Stroke, Up Stroke

Notice that after the first down stroke, I miss the strings on the up stroke. After the second down stroke, I do hit the following up stroke. What this does is it cuts the time of that stroke sounding in half. The first down stroke is a quarter note, the second down stroke is an eighth note.

3/4- Down Stroke, Down Stroke, Up Stroke, Down Stroke, Up Stroke
Rolling Strum- Down Stroke, Down Stroke, Up Stroke, Down Stroke

Strumming is one of the reasons why songs that use the same chords sound differently. Different guitarists use different strum patterns to play different songs. If everybody used the same strum patterns, most of the songs would sound just about the same. I am showing you 3 different strum patterns, but don't stop at these 3, make up your own. A metronome is useful here to help you maintain rhythm.

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