Guitar strumming patterns: 9 patterns from easy to syncopated

The rhythm exercises and notation figures in this guide come from the Hal Leonard Guitar Method by Will Schmid and Greg Koch. Its Complete Edition collects Books 1 to 3, which take rhythm from plain downstrums through eighth notes and the bass-note strum to syncopation, with full-band tracks to strum along with.

Guitar strumming patterns give a song most of its feel. The same three chords sound like a folk song, a pop hit or a reggae tune depending on the rhythm of the strumming hand, and every pattern rests on one simple motion.

This guide shows how to strum, how to read a strumming pattern written as arrows, letters or notation, and the one rule that keeps every pattern steady. Then come nine patterns, easiest first, each with its count, a practice tempo and songs to try it on. It ends with how to work out the pattern of any song, the same patterns on ukulele, a table of common problems and a free printable cheat sheet.

A strumming pattern is a repeating rhythm of down and up strokes counted “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”. Downstrums land on the numbers and upstrums on the “&”s, and your hand keeps swinging down and up the whole time, missing the strings where the pattern has a gap. The most common one, down, down-up, up-down-up, fits a large share of mid-tempo pop and folk songs in 4/4.

How to strum a guitar

Strum from the wrist, not the elbow. Rest the forearm on the top edge of the guitar and let the hand swing loosely below it, a motion the Hal Leonard Guitar Method compares to shaking water off your hand. A wrist that moves freely can strum faster and longer than an arm that swings from the shoulder.

Hold a thin or medium pick lightly, with a small tip showing past the thumb; the guide to how to hold a guitar shows the grip. A pick held too tightly catches on the strings and makes upstrums harsh. A downstrum starts on the thickest strings and naturally favors the low ones; an upstrum starts on the thinnest strings and favors the high ones. Neither has to hit all six strings every time: an upstrum that catches only the top three or four sounds lighter, and that contrast is part of what makes a pattern groove.

How to read a strumming pattern

Every way of writing a pattern says two things: which direction each stroke goes, and when it falls in the beat.

• Letters and arrows. D or ↓ is a downstrum, U or ↑ an upstrum. A gap or a dot means no stroke there.
• Counts. “1 2 3 4” are the beats; “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” splits each beat into two eighth notes. In the Hal Leonard method, a count in parentheses, such as (&), means the hand moves but misses the strings.
• Slash notation. In printed music, a slanted slash on the staff stands for one strum of the chord written above it. Stems and beams give the rhythm as they do for notes: a slash with a stem alone lasts a quarter note, and slashes beamed in pairs are eighth notes.
• Pick marks. Method books borrow two symbols from string players’ bowing: a square bracket shape for a downstroke and a V for an upstroke.
• Mutes and accents. A small x over a stroke means a muted strum, a percussive chop with the strings deadened; a > means an accent, a stroke played harder than the rest.

If eighth notes and counting are new, the guide to note values and time signatures explains them from the start. The legend below puts every symbol on one bar.

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The one rule: keep your hand moving

Your strumming hand moves down on every number and up on every “&”, all the time, like a pendulum. A pattern is simply a choice of which of those swings touch the strings. On a gap, the hand still makes the motion and just passes over the strings without hitting them, which guitarists call a ghost strum or a missed stroke.

A hand that stops on the gaps has to restart, and every restart pulls the timing early or late. A hand that keeps swinging arrives on the next beat on time. The rule also settles the direction of every stroke: anything on a number is a down, anything on an “&” is an up.

The pendulum figure shows the motion for the most common pattern, with the two swings that miss the strings drawn hollow.

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How to learn a new strumming pattern

1. Say it out loud first: “down, down-up, up-down-up”, then the counts. If you cannot say it in time, the hand will not play it in time.
2. Play it on one chord, with the fretting hand muting the strings or holding an easy shape such as E minor, until it loops without a stop.
3. Turn on the metronome at a slow tempo, 60 to 70 BPM (beats per minute), and play four bars in a row without a mistake.
4. Add a two-chord change: two bars of G, two of C, the pattern never stopping.
5. Play it in a song, then raise the tempo 5 to 10 BPM at a time, only when the last tempo was clean.

The strumming slot in a guitar practice routine follows these steps in five to ten minutes a day.

9 strumming patterns, easiest first

The patterns build on each other, so learn them in order. Six of the nine are printed as exercises in the Hal Leonard Guitar Method, and the figures below come from it. Book 1 teaches rhythm through eighth notes, the down-up strum, missed upstrokes and the bass-note strum. Book 2 adds syncopation, dotted rhythms and triplets, and the Complete Edition binds Books 1 to 3 into one volume with 164 full-band tracks to strum along with.

1. All downstrums

D D D D, counted “1 2 3 4”: one downstrum on every beat. Method books usually start here, because it trains a steady beat while the fretting hand changes chords. In the book’s first strumming exercise, each slash gets one downstroke while the chords alternate between C and G7.

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Each of the nine pattern clips plays four bars on one chord at the practice tempo.

The book then puts the strum under a real song: “Tom Dooley”, a traditional tune on C and G7. Strum four downs a bar along with the recording and change chord where the melody does.

Practice tempo: 70 BPM. Also try it on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day.

2. Straight eighths

D U D U D U D U, counted “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”: two strums per beat, down on the number and up on the “&”. It is the pendulum with every swing hitting the strings; every later pattern is this one with some swings missed.

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Practice tempo: 60 BPM. Song: “Best of You” by Foo Fighters.

3. Down, down-up

D · D U D · D U, counted “1 (&) 2 & 3 (&) 4 &”: the hand misses the upstroke after beats 1 and 3. It is the first pattern with ghost strums, and it already sounds like a song accompaniment. A halfway step, if it feels hard, is to miss only the first upstroke: D · D U D U D U.

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Practice tempo: 70 BPM. Use it on any song you learned with pattern 1 once the downs feel automatic.

4. The common pattern: down, down-up, up-down-up

D · D U · U D U, counted “1 (&) 2 & (3) & 4 &”. This is the pattern people mean by “the most common strumming pattern” in pop and folk, and on the ukulele it is the island strum. The hand misses beat 3, so the upstroke on the “&” of 2 rings across it. That push on an off-beat is syncopation, which the Hal Leonard method defines as stressing notes on the “ands” of beats. The book prints it as exercise 17, the lower line of the figure; the upper line, exercise 16, is pattern 5.

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Practice tempo: 60 BPM, then 80 once it loops. Songs: “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver. Over a four-chord loop such as I–V–vi–IV, the chord progression player gives you a backing to strum against.

5. The pause pattern

D U D U · U D U, counted “1 & 2 & (3) & 4 &”: straight eighths with beat 3 left out, the top line of the figure above. The gap in the middle of the bar is what sets it apart from straight eighths, and the hand has to keep swinging through it, or the upstroke after the gap comes in late.

Practice tempo: 60 BPM. Songs: “Riptide” by Vance Joy and “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train.

6. Bass note and strum

Bass, strum, bass, strum, one stroke per beat. Pick the bass note, usually the lowest note of the chord and the note it is named after, then strum the top strings, and repeat. Country and folk players call it “boom-chick”. In the book’s exercise, the strum takes the top four strings on G and C and the top three on D7, so the bass note stays clear.

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Practice tempo: 80 BPM. Song: “Ooh La La” by Faces.

7. The 3/4 waltz strum

D · D U D U, counted “1 2 & 3 &”: three beats to the bar, with a little extra weight on beat 1. A plain version is three downstrums. The book’s bass-note version, the lower line of the figure above, plays a bass note on beat 1 and strums on 2 and 3.

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Practice tempo: 90 BPM. Songs: “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles and “Tennessee Whiskey” by Chris Stapleton.

8. Reggae offbeat

· U · U · U · U, counted “(1) & (2) & (3) & (4) &”: short strums only on the “&”s, with the numbers left silent. Keep the pendulum going and let the hand catch the strings on the way up, a short, clipped stroke on the top three or four strings. Lift the fretting fingers slightly right after each stroke to stop the sound, so each chop is short. Some players chop down on the “&” instead; both sound right if the timing sits on the off-beat.

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Practice tempo: 70 BPM. Song: “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley.

9. 6/8 time

D d d D d d, counted “1 2 3 4 5 6”: six eighth notes to the bar, felt as two groups of three. The strokes on 1 and 4 are stronger. Play all six as downstrums at first, lighter on the small d’s. Once that rolls, the in-between strokes can alternate down and up.

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Practice tempo: 90 BPM, one click per eighth note. Songs: “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals and “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M..

Next step: sixteenth-note strumming

Once eighth notes are easy, split each beat into four: “1 e & a 2 e & a”. The pendulum doubles its speed, down on “1” and “&”, up on “e” and “a”, and patterns pick and mix from those sixteen slots. It is the strum behind “Wonderwall” by Oasis and “Long Train Runnin’” by the Doobie Brothers. Start at half the speed you would use for eighths.

Blues and swing tunes stretch the eighth notes unevenly instead: the first note of each pair lasts about twice as long as the second, which is called a shuffle or swing feel. The strokes stay the same, down on the beat and up on the “&”, with the upstroke arriving late. The guide to the 12-bar blues puts the shuffle to work.

How to find the strumming pattern of any song

Working out a song’s pattern by ear takes five steps, and many songs change pattern between verse and chorus.

1. Count the beat. Tap your foot and count along. If “1 2 3 4” fits, the song is in four; if “1 2 3” fits, it is in three; if the beat feels like two rolling groups of three, it is in 6/8.
2. Find the snare. In most pop and rock songs in 4/4, the snare drum hits on beats 2 and 4. Locking to it tells you where the numbers are.
3. Strum every beat first. Play pattern 1 along with the recording. If it sounds thin, the song needs upstrums.
4. Add the upstrums you hear. Keep the pendulum going and let the hand catch the strings only where the recording has a stroke. The gaps are usually the giveaway.
5. Check it against a score. Guitar arrangements on musescore.com often write the strum in slash notation with the chords above, and the playback lets you hear it.

A recording may have two guitars, or a strum that changes every few bars; a pattern that fits the feel and keeps the chords on time is the right one for you. A chord loop played on the guitar chord progressions you already know is a good test bed for each new pattern.

Strumming patterns on ukulele

Every pattern on this page works on a ukulele, counted the same way. Pattern 4 is the island strum, the pattern most ukulele songs start with, and the pendulum rule is the same. The difference is the hand: most ukulele players strum with the index finger, the nail brushing down and the fingertip coming back up, over the spot where the neck meets the body. “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz keeps one relaxed pattern through the whole song, which makes it the usual first test; the list of ukulele songs for beginners has more.

If you are starting on ukulele, the guide to ukulele for beginners covers the first chords and four first patterns. For a full course, the Hal Leonard Ukulele Method, Book 1, by Lil’ Rev, covers tuning, the first chords, strumming and reading music in one beginner course.

Common strumming problems and fixes

An adult who says they have no rhythm usually has a hand that stops on the gaps. The pendulum rule, practiced slowly, fixes that at any age.

Download the strumming patterns cheat sheet

The free cheat sheet puts all nine patterns and the sixteenth-note step on one printable page, with the counts, the letters and a practice tempo for each. Each tempo links to the metronome, so the click starts from the page.

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The patterns on the sheet are written rhythms, and a method book teaches reading them in order: quarter notes, then eighth notes, then ties and syncopation, each with a song to play it on.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most common strumming pattern?

Down, down-up, up-down-up, counted “1, 2 &, (3) & 4 &”. The hand misses the strings on beat 3 but keeps moving, so the upstroke after beat 2 rings across it. It fits a large share of mid-tempo pop and folk songs in 4/4, and on the ukulele it is called the island strum.

How do you read strumming patterns?

D or a down arrow is a downstrum and U or an up arrow is an upstrum. The counts underneath show where each stroke falls: numbers are beats, “&”s are the halfway points. A gap or a count in parentheses means the hand moves without hitting the strings, x is a muted strum and > is an accent.

Should you strum with a pick or your fingers?

Either works. A thin or medium pick gives a brighter, more even strum and is the usual choice on steel-string and electric guitars. Strumming with the side of the thumb or the nail of the index finger sounds softer and suits nylon strings and the ukulele. Many players use both.

How do I find the strumming pattern for a song?

Count the beat with your foot, find the snare on beats 2 and 4, and strum every beat first. Then keep the hand moving down and up and add only the upstrums you hear in the recording. Check your version against a guitar score on musescore.com, and expect the verse and chorus to differ.

Why does my strumming sound robotic?

Usually because every stroke is the same strength. Play the downstrums a little stronger than the upstrums, accent beats 2 and 4 where the snare would be, and practice along with a recording instead of only the metronome. Loosening the grip on the pick helps as well.

Start with pattern 1 tonight

All nine patterns come from the same down-up pendulum. Learn them in order, one a week, on one chord and then in a song, and keep the hand moving through every gap. Set the metronome to 70 BPM, play four downstrums on a G chord, and you have started pattern 1.

For more strums in the same order, each with a band track, continue with the Hal Leonard Guitar Method – Complete Edition.