Brief Summary
In this video, Kevin Nickens discusses an efficient way to learn guitar strumming patterns, focusing on all 256 possible strumming patterns. He emphasizes understanding basic concepts like time signatures and the mechanics of strumming that are crucial for developing rhythm skills.
- Learning strumming patterns through song examples is slow and can create gaps in knowledge.
- The fundamental patterns include down strums (quarter notes) and down-up strums (eighth notes).
- Advanced understanding involves recognizing variations of these basic patterns, totaling 256 options, and thinking about strumming in terms of counting beats.
Kevin starts by reflecting on how most people learn strumming patterns inefficiently, often by picking them up from songs without a comprehensive understanding. He introduces the idea that knowing all 256 possible strumming patterns can help learners become more proficient quickly and without gaps in their knowledge. The goal is to establish a solid foundation before moving on to more complex strumming techniques.
He explains the fundamental strumming pattern as down-down-down-down, with a G chord provided as an example. Kevin highlights that many beginners struggle to grasp this pattern, which is essential for a solid grasp of rhythm. He introduces the concept of time signatures, particularly focusing on the common 4/4 time signature, which divides music into four beats.
The video goes on to define quarter notes as musical events occurring within a measure of 4/4 time. Kevin reinforces that counting these as "1, 2, 3, 4" is crucial for developing a sense of rhythm. He stresses that many players lack this foundational understanding, which can be detrimental to their playing skills.
Next, Kevin introduces the second essential strumming pattern, down-up down-up, which relates to eighth notes. He discusses how these eighth notes derive from quarter notes by splitting them in half. To apply this to strumming, he suggests the key is to maintain a constant motion of the hand while inserting the up strums where necessary.
For counting eighth notes, rather than counting to eight, players should count to four with an added "and" for each half beat: "1 and 2 and 3 and 4." This method helps learners understand how to strum in a consistent rhythm while still focusing on the individual pattern.
Kevin explains that the remaining 254 strumming patterns are variations of the basic quarter and eighth notes. These variations are achieved by removing certain strums from the primary down-up pattern. Keeping the hand in motion ensures that the player maintains rhythm, as they only need to decide when to strike the strings.
He emphasizes that a key aspect of playing guitar is to think of strumming patterns numerically rather than strictly in terms of downs and ups. By associating numbers with down strums and the "ands" with up strums, players can easily recognize and replicate strumming patterns they hear.
In conclusion, Kevin summarizes the most important strumming patterns — the down-down-down-down (quarter notes), down-up down-up (eighth notes), and the numerous variations derived from these basics. He encourages players to translate rhythm into strumming patterns through this counting method for better accuracy and rhythm in their music.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “Every Possible Strumming Pattern Explained in 8 Minutes”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 I think the way most people learn strumming patterns is pretty inefficient if you're anything like me you started by just learning songs and picking up the strumming patterns in those songs so really just wandering the internet desert and cobbling together a random set of strumming patterns the problem with this is that it's number one slow and number two leaves huge gaps in your knowledge in this video I'm going to explain all 256 possible strumming patterns on guitar in order so you can learn them quickly and with no gaps in your knowledge let's start at the beginning the very first out of all 256 strumming patterns and that'll make more sense in a minute but the first one you should learn is this down down down down now I'm holding a G chord but really it doesn't matter this is about the right hand and that's not a remarkably difficult strumming pattern to play all
0:46 right but there's a lot of players especially beginners who don't understand this pattern and they're playing suffers because of it you see the key to watching that beginner guitar player smell off yourself here is just becoming aware of something that you're probably doing without even realizing it and that is thinking about music in groups of four I just told you guys that the most fundamental kind of strumming pattern is four down strums not five not less than four and I'm willing to bet that just about none of you batted an eye at that this is because of what we call time signatures and all time signatures do is tell us how to think about the timing or the Rhythm in a certain song this is the most common time signature and it's called four four time or common time now it probably looks more intimidating than it is all it means is that when we look at our standard unit of time in music which we call a measure or like more informally a
1:33 bar when we look at a measure we're going to split this up into four beats and again like I said before you're probably doing this already without realizing it so when I tell you the most fundamental kind of strumming pattern is four down strums 1 2 3 4 You should count it just exactly like that 1 2 3 4 again I know this is simple but a lot of guitar players struggle with this and a lot of guitar players because of that have an underdeveloped sense of Rhythm and by the way when we take a measure of 44 time and we have have a strum or a note or any musical event per one of those four beats that's called a quarter note and that kind of makes sense you know like four and a quarter there's four quarter notes in a bar of four four time all this tracks relatively simply but what if we want to strum a little faster so if you want to strum faster
2:18 you got to learn about the second most important strumming pattern which is down up down up down up down up now I know what you're probably thinking you're probably thinking dang quarter notes eighth notes we're Counting stuff I didn't become a rock star so I could do math but here's the secret all rock stars do math eighth notes are exactly the same as quarter notes except for um no all right no they're not the same that's just not true all right I don't know math that's proof I'm not a rockstar eighth notes are what happens when you take a quarter note and you just cut it directly in half so now you have two notes that fill the same amount of time the same amount of space as a quarter note did before and this is really easy to apply to strumming so whereas before when we had quarter notes we were just doing them all with down strums 1 2 3 4 You know you notice that
3:06 when you're strumming down you have to reset your hand anyway to do another down Strom so instead of just resetting just turn your wrist and hit an upstrom down up down up down up down up all of this leaves the question how do we count these because before we had 1 2 3 4 and now we have eight eighth nodes so do we count one 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 the answer is no we don't just count to eight we're still counting to four but we have to insert a symbol or if we're counting out loud a syllable to make you know like eight individual musical events out of four beats and the symbol SL syllable we use is and so we would count eighth notes we would count down up down up down up down up as one and
3:53 two and three and four and and so that's the second most important strumming pattern down up down up down up down up and that correlates to eighth notes whereas before in level one we were talking about quarter notes but we still have over 250 strumming patterns to explain what do I mean by that and how am I going to explain all that in so at this point we understand quarter notes and we understand eighth notes what's next well all 254 remaining strumming patterns are actually just modifications or variations of these original two more specifically all the remaining strumming patterns are just modifications of of down up down up down up down up and the way that works is by just removing certain strums from that pattern to create new strumming patterns mathematically speaking if you have the
4:39 pattern down up down up down up down up and you can either be strumming or not strumming as we just talked about on any one of those notes then you have 256 possible strumming patterns to give an example you know a very common strumming pattern is down down down up down up this can be thought of as just down up down up down up down up without the first two ups so down up down up down up down up if I move my hand in the exact same way I keep it moving every single time I just don't make contact with the strings on the first two ups we get the new pattern we get down down down up down up and to be clear you know this goes for all the remaining strumming patterns another really common one is down down
5:26 up up down up you should think of this as just exactly the same thing as down up down up down up down up we just remove some of those passes our hand doesn't make contact on some of those strums and that's what creates the new strumming pattern the reason you think about it like this is to keep good Rhythm you see if your hand is constantly moving then you're always going to stay on beat one of the keys to to having good Rhythm as a musician is always thinking about you know where where the beat is at in the song but you know there's a lot of stuff going on when you're playing you don't really want to be keeping track of this your head but your hand can keep track of it for you if your hand is constantly moving with eighth notes and you just think about when to make contact with the strings you don't have to worry about staying on beat you just actually have to think about the pattern so you
6:12 know the original promise of this video was all strumming patterns in order there you go it's down down down down cuz that's quarter notes it's down up down up down up down up because that's eighth notes and then all the variations of those to create a 254 way tie for third but before we end the video I have to explain the other big leap forward in your understanding here you should stop thinking about strumming patterns in terms of downs and ups and start thinking about them in terms of counting music think about them as in terms of numbers you know 1 2 3 4 and ands the way to convert any down up pattern to a counting pattern is just knowing that the number you know 1 2 3 or four is always going to be a down Strom just like it is and down up down up down up down up and the ends are always going to be upums so if you can listen to a song
6:57 and identify the Rhythm then you just use that that simple formula the number becomes a down the and becomes an up to identify the strumming pattern pretty much immediately for example I could show you a pattern and with a little practice and a little bit of thinking about eighth noes you should be able to pretty much identify that that is 1 and two and 3 4 and then you know that okay if this was a struming pattern it would look like this down up down up down down so in conclusion the number one most important strumming pattern is down down down down cuz it's quarter notes second most important is down up down up down up down up because it's eighth notes the third most important strumming pattern is a 254 way tie between all the permutations of down up down up down up down up and the way to convert any rhythm into a strumming pattern is
7:44 always thinking about the number as a down strum and the ANS as an upstrom I hope this helps and thank you for watching
