HOW TO FIGURE OUT A STRUMMING PATTERN FROM THE RECORD. count it, then copy it

Most strumming patterns look complicated written down and are simple underneath. The strumming hand moves like a pendulum: down, up, down, up, in time with the music, and it never stops. The pattern is just which of those movements hit the strings and which ones miss.

In most pop, rock, folk and worship songs in 4/4, the hand moves down on every beat (1, 2, 3, 4) and up on every “and” in between. That gives eight slots a bar. A pattern such as “down, down-up, up-down-up” is those eight slots with two of them missed. Once you hear it that way, working one out is a matter of finding which slots are empty.

This is why you can’t learn a strum by copying the hand in a video frame by frame. Copy the rhythm, keep the pendulum going, and the right movements come by themselves.

Pick one section, usually the verse, and work on a single bar of it. Most songs repeat the same one- or two-bar pattern through a whole section, so one bar is often the whole job.

The hard part is hearing the strums at all. In a full mix the drums sit right on top of them, a second guitar or a piano fills the same space, and the vocal takes your attention. Three things fix that.

Isolate the guitar. The Guitar Stem Splitter splits the song into six stems: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and the rest. Press S on Guitar in the Studio’s Stems mixer and you hear it alone. Acoustic and electric guitars both land in the Guitar stem; a second guitar can land in Other, so turn that up if a part seems to be missing. Splitting runs on a computer, in Chrome or Edge.

Slow it down. The BPM stepper in the Studio header moves the tempo one BPM at a time, from half the song’s speed to double, and the pitch stays where it is. At about three-quarter speed the gaps between strums open up. Slow Down Songs covers the speed control in detail.

Add a click on the eighths. The Studio’s metronome clicks on the song’s own beats, and at 2× it clicks twice a beat: on every number and every “and”. That is your eight slots, out loud. Beat one of each bar clicks higher, so you never lose the start of the bar.

In the screenshot, the demo song Coming Home is slowed from 143 to 107 BPM, 0.75×, with Guitar soloed and the Metronome row at 2×. When a stem is soloed, only soloed rows play, so the Metronome is soloed too. Now every strum lands against a click, and you can hear which slots it fills.

Thousands of songs use a handful of patterns, or small changes to them. Learn to recognise these and you will often name a pattern on the first listen. D is a down strum, U an up strum, and a dash is a slot your hand moves through without touching the strings.

All downs: D - D - D - D - . Four even strums. Driving rock and punk songs often play this, and at a fast tempo it becomes eight downs, one on every slot.

Down, down-up: D - D U D - D U. A gentle, rocking pattern for ballads and folk songs.

The common one: D - D U - U D U. Down, down-up, up-down-up. It skips the strum on beat three, and that missed down is what gives it its lift. It turns up in pop, folk and worship songs everywhere.

Swung or in 6/8: songs that lilt count “1 2 3 4 5 6”, with the hand going down-up-down, down-up-down or simply down on 1 and 4. If “1 and 2 and” feels wrong for a song, try counting it in six. Our guide on how to find the BPM of a song covers how to tell a song’s pulse.

Getting the slots right gets you most of the way. The rest is in three details that make a pattern sound like the record rather than like an exercise.

Accents. Some strums are louder than others, usually the ones on beats two and four, where the snare drum hits. Listen to the guitar alone and notice which strums jump out. Strum those harder.

Muted strums. The “chk” sound in funk, reggae and a lot of acoustic pop is a strum with the fretting hand relaxed so the strings are muted. It still takes a slot. Count it as a strum, just a percussive one.

Pushes. Often the chord changes half a beat early, on the “and” before the beat, so it is already sounding when the beat arrives. If your changes feel late, listen for this. Put the A–B loop round the change and play just those two beats until you catch it.

Once you know the pattern, set an A–B loop round the section in the Studio. The loop snaps to the song’s beat grid, so it comes round on the downbeat. Play along with the guitar soloed at a slow speed until the pattern runs without you thinking about it.

Then bring the band back in: press S on Guitar again to unsolo it, or press M on it to mute it and play the part yourself, which turns the song into a backing track. Raise the speed a few BPM at a time until you are back at the record’s tempo. Our guide to the metronome for songs has exercises for when your time drifts.

Everything here works on ukulele too. Ukulele strums the same pendulum, often with a lighter touch and more up strums, and the counting, the slow speed and the click help just as much. Play along with the chords in time: pick Ukulele in the Studio’s Live chords bar and every diagram is drawn for ukulele.