Guitar Strumming Patterns for Beginners

I have been teaching beginning guitar classes for employees at Yamaha since 2019. Because many of my students have little or no musical background, the goal is to teach them simple chords and strumming patterns so they can play some basic songs.

Here are some simple strumming patterns that you can implement in your guitar classes so your students can play as a group using simple counting, eighth note subdivisions and simple repeated down/up strumming.

Using the basic chord shapes for G, Cadd9 (C is fine, too), D, Am and Em, try a few common strumming patterns starting with simple quarter note strumming. Because the focus of this article is strumming patterns, we will keep the chord changes in the fretting hand simple.

Whole-Note Strumming: Starting with E minor (Em), let’s look at Example 1 of “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, which requires only downstrokes. Start with a nice slow tempo. Students should play Em with either a pick or their thumb. They should count to four — 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 — slowly and strum down on beat 1 only.

Half-Note Strumming: In Example 2, students are strumming half notes. They still count to 4, but this time, they strum down on beats 1 and 3.

Quarter-Note Strumming: Example 3 gets our group to play something that starts to sound more like music. Students still count to four out loud and strum down on each count, taking care to stay in time.

Eighth-Note Strumming: It may seem obvious, but when we strum down four times, there are also four “missed” strums on the way back up. Imagine that the strumming hand is a pendulum or an old-school metronome arm. Count the downstrokes as 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 and subdivide each with an upstroke using the word “and.” Doing this turns quarter-note strumming using all downstrokes into an eighth-note pattern simply by strumming down and then back up (look at Example 4), alternating and counting:

1 – & – 2 – & – 3 – & – 4 – &

Mix and Match: Continuing through the patterns in Example 4, we can mix and match quarter notes and eighth notes to come up with a variety of basic patterns, focusing first on maintaining a slow and consistent back-and-forth in the strumming hand while counting out loud. After becoming familiar with each simple strumming pattern, students can start to pick up the tempo. Then, introduce some simple chord changes to make it all sound more musical. This is the foundation of playing basic songs on guitar.

Example 5 shows the same strumming pattern throughout but introduces a few chord changes. Be sure to have your group slowly play together and count out loud. Keep reminding them that downstrokes are always on 1 – 2 – 3 – 4, and upstrokes are on the “and” count in between the numbers.

Full Downstroke, Partial Upstroke: It’s worth noting here (and often left out of basic guitar methods and tutorials) that when strumming downstrokes on the heavier beats, you do not need to hit all the strings in the chord. For example, Em and G will use all six strings, C and Am use five strings, D uses four, etc.

However, on upstrokes (the “ands”), we usually strum only the bottom three strings. This is important for a few reasons. The first is that it sounds more musical. Strumming all the strings up and then back down creates a lot of sound and is overwhelming.

Using a full strum on the downstroke and a smaller partial strum on the upstroke allows the sound to breathe. It also accents the strong beats (1 – 2 – 3 – 4) and keeps the upstrokes (“ands”) sounding smaller. This also lets our strumming hand relax and reset and puts more of the motion in the wrist when strumming down/up, rather than swinging from the elbow.

Try Example 6, focusing on the full downstroke and smaller “mini” upstroke. Listen to how this adds more variety and life into the strumming pattern. From here, students should be able to duplicate some simple patterns by ear by listening to you demonstrate the strum or by listening to a recording and copying the sound of the guitar pattern.

After mastering these foundational strumming patterns, students can move on to rhythms that create more movement and musical interest.

More Advanced Strumming

Examples A through E introduce more complex basic strumming patterns where you don’t strum on each beat. Try learning them one at a time and then adding simple chord changes using each pattern. G to Em to C to D is a very common chord progression. Or, have students switch between two chords using one strum pattern and changing chords every four or eight counts.

One Important Tip: Make sure your students are strumming from the wrist using small strums. The goal is to get from one side of the strings to the other with minimal motion and medium volume. There’s more motion in the wrist, less in the forearm and elbow. Think of it like shaking water off your hands and less like swinging a hammer.

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Finally, try playing along with songs and listening for strumming patterns that best fit the overall sound of the song. Sometimes there isn’t a specific guitar part, but you can still get the tempo and feel of the song by listening to the drums and bass or other instruments. Try using some of the strumming patterns above to play along with the song you’re working on and see which one fits the best. And don’t be afraid to try your own strumming patterns or mix and match!

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Download all the exercises discussed in this article.