Rhythm Guitar Lessons
Learn guitar chords and strumming techniques
Learn more about different strumming patterns and strumming techniques.
Strumming Patterns
8 Beats
16 Beats
14 Beats
More Pattern Playlists Coming Up
Strumming Styles
With this style you replace some strokes with a bass note using the 6th and 5th strings. For instance, say you are playing a 4/4 rhythm, where you have a down stroke for a G open chord for each one of the 4 beats. Now, try replacing your 1st stroke with just the G note on the 6th string, and your 3rd stroke with just the B note on your 5th string. This produces an effect like a drum where you are hitting the kick and snare on beats 1 and 3, and the high hat on beats 2 and 4. This is ideal for songs with a swing style beat, like for songs with the “tanga” beat used by legends like O P Nayyar in many of his songs, which give the feel of a horse carriage moving along.
Popular Lessons
When you strum, you hit all the strings at the same time with each stroke. With fan strumming you increase the gap between each string’s sound, very useful when you are trying to reproduce the rolling drum or other percussion sound in a track.
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Plucking the strings with individual fingers gives more control than other styles. By plucking all the strings at exactly the same moment, you get a rich sound similar to when you hit multiple keys on the piano at the same time. When played with good timing, this style can be very soothing to the ears and very well suited for certain songs. Here are some lessons where I have showed this technique,
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Hammer-On
This technique is similar to how you play a single note and hammer-on to a higher note with another finger instead of actually picking the string again for the second note. Similarly, when playing a chord, you strum all the strings across the same fret and then quickly hammer on your other fingers to form the chord.
Popular Lessons
