Strumming Pattern – Forever by Chris Tomlin

I took this pattern from the rhythm of the hi hats on the original Chris Tomlin recording but because it’s a straight groove there’s a lot of license to build your own pattern. So lots of patterns could work. Just be careful not to add to many up strum pushes so to upset the straight beat rock nature of the song itself. Interestingly its actually very similar to the Shout to the Lord groove, just sped up.

We have Forever as one of our Worship Backing Band DVD tracks. You can remove the guitar from the mix and play along with the pro band (the words and chords are all on screen). Its also one of the songs taught on our Beginners Worship Guitar course.

Caveats:

• I’ve tried to pick the patterns from either the original album version or a fairly stock version of each song but of course, there are many versions of each song, and even within each version there will be some room to change up the strumming pattern and still fit the groove.
• Do realise that while each strumming pattern will work for the song on its own, if your drummer, or indeed your band is playing a different groove (consciously or unconsciously!) then it may not entirely fit. The key is to make sure the main accents in the rhythm of the melody are reflected in the strumming pattern.