Quick Guide to Higher Level Strumming on Guitar

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This video is made in support of Andy's intermediate Guitar course. Click the button below for more info.

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In many ways, the rhythm of whatever you are playing is even more important than the notes your play. The aim of this section is to make sure your strumming and rhythm is up to par with the rest of your guitar playing.

Here, we’ll cover how we break down a bar into quarter, 8th and 16th notes and learn how to really nail 16th strumming patterns!

4th Strumming aka The beat 

You should be super familiar with this by now and is covered at Level 1 of my Beginners Course. However, i've added an accent shown by the > symbol on each beat in all the patterns on this page for visual comparison and also to hep you feel the beat when you strum with 8ths or 16th rhythms.


8th Strumming aka Quavers

Aka the 8th strumming from Level 2 of my Beginners Course, but with accents on the beat. This should be played with all down strumming in this exercise.


16th Strumming aka Semi-quavers

16th strumming is where we play 16 strums per bar using semi quavers, meaning there are four strums per beat. On the diagram above, the notes that fall on the beat are accented by the > which means they a should be played louder (in reality, non accented strums played quieter sounds more natural).

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This video is made in support of Andy's intermediate Guitar course. Click the button below for more info

intermediate course

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