Hey everyone! I’m super late posting this, BUT I just held off as my following week’s learning topic coincided with this week’s a little bit! Anyway! This week of my guitar journey, I tackled strumming! Strumming is a sweeping motion using the pick or your fingers (or both!) over the strings. I was unaware that strumming had more parts to it than just brushing the strings. I first searched on TikTok for ‘beginner guitar strumming,’ and a video by @gregorhuntercoleman popped up that I found as a good introduction. I learned that when strumming, there are different patterns used.

@gregorhuntercoleman

Guitar Tutorial – Strumming Patterns! Hope this helps! #guitarlesson #guitartutorial #learnguitar #guitartok #strumming #beginnerguitar

♬ original sound – Gregor

In the TikTok he went over DUDUDU, DDUUDU, and DD UDU, D meaning strumming downwards and U meaning strumming upwards. I found the first 2 patterns easy enough, but the third pattern’s slight pause in the middle would catch me off guard. I went slower than the creator did so I could practice strumming the third pattern with the pause in it and become more comfortable with the pause and tempo change. Once I was comfortable enough with playing those 3 patterns, I searched on YouTube to find others.

On YouTube I found a creator named @Marty Music. I was able to find 5 different strumming pattern videos by Marty. In these videos, the patterns he shared also had the slight pauses, which was perfect since those were the patterns I was struggling with. The 5 patterns were DD DU DU, DUD U U UDU, D DU D, DU  U DU, D D UDUDUDUDU. I really liked Marty’s lessons, as he gave us an opportunity to listen to him strum, let us strum alongside him, and play with a couple of chords while strumming. I mostly stuck with strumming alongside him and then eventually started strumming the patterns by myself but without the chords to practice the motion and technique. The time he gave us to join in is how I was able to grasp the spaces, as well as him repeating the pattern out loud, which was incredibly helpful. Eventually, I would listen to him strum and announce the pattern, and then I paused the video and strummed while saying the pattern out loud. The thing that helped the best was repeating the patterns aloud to stay with the tempo.

Strumming is definitely more challenging than it looks. I’ve been practicing the motion to get the wrist movement/transition from up to down and vice versa smoother. I’m slowly getting the hang of it and already feel comfortable strumming a couple of patterns, which I’ve included. ALSO, I practiced each pattern with a G chord!