Now we’re going to begin training your right arm to co-ordinate with the beat.
Once you are secure with where the pulse is, your want to train your right arm to move down in time with the pulse. To begin with, you may want to hit the strings while muting them with your left hand. You can also simply move your arm down without making contact with the strings.
Key concept: your arm is always moving in time with the pulse. This is the fundamental point to understand. Any strumming pattern that you create or rhythm that you can strum is created as a result of which down and up strokes make contact with the strings. The continual movement of your right arm will keep you in time.
It’s very normal to find yourself getting out of sync to begin with. If you practice moving your arm in time with the pulse to the same rhythm training track we had in the previous session, you will soon get more familiar with doing this. Once you can do it to the rhythm tracks, you can try these different patterns in time with your favourite songs, still muting the strings with the left hand. Once your chord changes are at around 30 in a minute, you’ll be able to apply these strumming patterns to the chords that you know, and that will feel really satisfying.
Below you’ll see a simple way of notating where, relative to the count, your arm should make contact with the strings. When you are doing all the downstrokes, you can see the boxes are checked next to 1 2 3 4, and that aligns with D for downstrokes. Have a look and see if that makes sense to you.
| D | U | D | U | D | U | D | U |
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| x | x | x | x |
As we move through the different examples, you can see this grid is telling you to play down – up on beat 1 +, and then downstrokes on 2, 3, 4.
| D | U | D | U | D | U | D | U |
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| x | x | x | x | x |
Here, the down up has moved to beat 2 +
| D | U | D | U | D | U | D | U |
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| x | x | x | x | x |
And here it has moved to beat 3 +
| D | U | D | U | D | U | D | U |
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| x | x | x | x | x |
Lastly, it’s on beat 4 +
| D | U | D | U | D | U | D | U |
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| x | x | x | x | x |
Congratulations on learning five different strumming patterns, and getting some foundational understanding on how to build up your rhythm skills on guitar.
