Strumming Patterns and Muted Strings

Strumming Patterns and Muted Strings

How to Play Guitar in 10 Easy Steps by Jon Buck defines strumming patterns by saying, "As long as you keep to the pulse, you can strum as many or as few beats as you like: a combination of down and up strokes can sound really effective and change the rhythmic feel" (38). Or, in other words, in addition to how often you play a chord on guitar, you can also change how the chord is played by strumming up or down. Up strums represent 8th notes on guitar, and are used for both a quicker tempo, and to change the sound of the chord, because with an upstrum the higher strings can be heard more clearly than the lower ones. 

The first complex strumming pattern I learned is Down-Down-Up-Up-Down, an extremely common pattern that shows up a lot in rock, pop, and blues music.

Down-Down-Up-Up-Down strumming pattern

The first song I used the Down-Down-Up-Up-Down pattern on was Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl. When playing the song I had trouble doing up-strums on the C and D chords, because neither of these chords use all 6 strings. I would often hit one string too many on both chords, causing the chord to sound wrong. To adapt to this, I began making use of a technique called muting. Muting is lightly pressing down on or against an unused string with your finger, so when the string is strummed it won't be able to vibrate. Muting the unused E string on C by pushing the finger that was holding down D, and muting E and A by reaching my thumb over the neck of the guitar for D allowed me to play upstrums of these chords without the unwanted strings sounding.