Ask the Expert – How to find a strumming pattern without a drummer

Jonny Taylor, age 15 emails:
“Hi, I just finished watching the the Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar Course lesson on building a strumming pattern. In all of the examples, Andy listened to the drumbeat and went from there. About once a month, I play guitar in my church, without a drummer. Usually just me and and our pianist. How should I go about making a strumming pattern when I don’t have a drum beat to listen to? This is my biggest struggle with guitar.”

Andy replies:

This is a very good question. Actually there is a section on the Intermediate Acoustic Course about finding strumming patterns if you have no drummer. Do take a look at it as it will answer your question…

But basically what you need to do is listen to the rhythm of the melody.
Very often the recurring rhythms in the melody line will come on, before or just after each beat in the bar and that’s what you (and drummers) need to look for when creating your groove.

For instance on the song Praise is Rising, the word ‘Praise’ comes on beat 1, ‘is’ comes on beat 3 and ‘Rising’ comes on the upstrum after beat 4, i.e. the ‘4-and’. Therefore you make sure you are strumming on those beats. If you want to give extra emphasis to a beat, don’t strum imediately before it – e.g if you strum on the ‘4-and’ don’t play on beat 4 and it will highlight the upstrum.

We’ve created a whole set of free strumming patterns on the blog so do click through for them.