{"id":9194,"date":"2012-12-14T18:26:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T18:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/?p=9194"},"modified":"2019-10-30T15:50:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T15:50:33","slug":"strumming-patterns-worship-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/strumming-patterns-worship-guitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding strumming patterns for worship guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strumming patterns for worship guitarists<\/h2>\n

If there\u2019s one piece of advice I\u2019d give to acoustic guitarists to improve their tone and dynamics it is to think about their strumming patterns. Very often when we first learn to play we get pretty good at changing chords with our left hands but don\u2019t pay so much attention to the hand that holds down the rhythm. At worst we end up with two or three strumming patterns that we try to fit into everything and even if we learn to feel the right groove the patterns can be a bit wild and random.<\/p>\n

Developing your rhythm technique will improve your timing, dynamics and will help the whole band to gel together musically. A good strumming pattern is like a key ingredient that all the other instrument parts can bond around. Change that one ingredient and the whole flavor of the song can be upset. So if we keep changing our patterns randomly it becomes very difficult for the other instruments to find a consistent groove.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never analysed how strumming patterns work the main thing to understand is that depending on the type of song, your hand should generally be playing 8th<\/sup> or 16th<\/sup> note rhythms. Most mid tempo songs use 16th<\/sup> note patterns and 8ths<\/sup> are used for either slow songs with gentle grooves or really fast songs where it\u2019s simply not possible to strum 16th<\/sup> times per bar.<\/p>\n

For an 8th<\/sup> note rhythm the idea is that your hand will move down and up eight times in a bar and you would count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, and for the 16th<\/sup> notes your hand will move sixteen times. The easiest way to count this is 1,e,&,a,2,e,&,a,3,e,&,a,4,e,&,a (e as in tea and a as in abba) which rolls off the tongue nicely. If you start with a down strum at the beginning of the bar all numbers i.e. 1 2 3 4 and \u2018&\u2019s should land on a down strum and \u2018e\u2019s and \u2018a\u2019s should be upstrums. The key thing is to keep your hand moving in that 16th<\/sup> note rhythm regardless of whether your hand is hitting the strings or not. So if we were to strum every permutation of a 16th note rhythm it would look like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course if you played every possible down and upstrum in a bar it would be all noise and there would be no room for anyone else to add anything in to create a groove. The beauty of a pattern is actually more about the spaces you create<\/strong> when you don\u2019t play than the actual strumming when you do.<\/p>\n

To understand this let\u2019s take a song like How Great is Our God.<\/em> To find our pattern we predominantly listen to the kick and snare drum patterns and count along to the beats in the bar. So get your strumming arm moving at a 16th<\/sup> note pattern and count \u201c1 e & a, 2 e & a, 3 e & a, 4 e & a\u201d\u00a0 and try to count where your strums and kick and snare are lining up.<\/p>\n

The kick drum line on most versions is on the 1, the 3 and the 3& with the snare played on the 2 and 4 \u2013 so these are where you want to play your down strums but if you only strum those your pattern will sound a little bit empty. You next need to add some extra upstrums just to provide a sense of momentum. Again, don\u2019t just do this randomly. These are normally found by listening to the extra accents in the groove found by the rhythm of the hi hats or the accents or \u2018pushes\u2019 in the rhythm of the vocal line. So try this pattern and see how it fits the song.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Three rules for effective strumming<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. ALWAYS keep your hand moving so that the downs and ups naturally fall into place. If you stop moving it will mess your downs and ups around.<\/li>\n
  2. If you\u2019ve got more than one acoustic guitar, either play exactly the same rhythm or perhaps split the pattern up and both play some parts of it. Again don\u2019t make it too busy or you\u2019ll eave no space for other instruments.<\/li>\n
  3. Once you\u2019ve found a strumming pattern that fits, don\u2019t go changing it randomly, as it forms part of the rhythm section and if you are playing with anyone else they need to fit what they are doing with your rhythm to form a tight groove.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Where to go for more help:<\/h2>\n

    Our brand new Beginning Worship Guitar Course<\/a> teaches 15 strumming patterns, 35 chord shapes and much more.<\/p>\n

    Our\u00a0Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar\u00a0 Course<\/a>\u00a0gives you 35 usable strumming patterns as well as 18 finger style and 30 strumming technique ideas. Click through to watch the sample video.<\/p>\n

    The Worship Backing Band “Super Chord Charts”<\/a> give strumming patterns and groove guides as well as chord charts and loads of other useful information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Strumming patterns for worship guitarists If there\u2019s one piece of advice I\u2019d give to acoustic guitarists to improve their tone and dynamics it is to think about their strumming patterns. Very often when we first learn to play we get pretty good at changing chords with our left hands but don\u2019t pay so much attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUnderstanding strumming patterns for worship guitar<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"New players often focus on changing chords but forget the rhythm hand and end up with two or three strumming patterns that we try to fit into everything.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/strumming-patterns-worship-guitar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding 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