The beat ( 1 2 3 4 ) is where a down strum should always be. The off-beat is where an UP strum should always be. If either of these gets mixed up it is all too easy to fall out of rhythm and lose your timing. First of all, we will learn some basic terminology and show you how it works when playing Candy by Paolo Nutini

The beat ( 1 2 3 4 ) is where a down strum should always be. The off-beat is where a UP strum should always be. If either of these gets mixed up it is all too easy to fall out of rhythm and lose your timing. Today we will look at a few examples where we can identify the offbeat.

Sometimes a chord comes in earlier than the first beat of a new bar. Lets look at a few examples

Alternating between a chord and its bass note needs some accurate plectrum work and an understanding of where you can find the bass note

A triplet is a rhythm playing three notes in the space of two. That is, three evenly spaced notes in the space of two notes of the same rhythmic value. The most common example is the 8th note triplet. An eighth note triplet rhythm is 3 notes played in the space of 2 eighth notes.

*Any song with a relatively straightforward rhythm that is. The goal of this course is to have given you enough information about different strumming patterns to start identifying them for yourself in any song. [Maybe even if the song doesn't have any guitar in it!]

What strumming pattern should I use?

I regularly get asked this question from my students and it’s a very interesting one to consider. There may be slight variations in the song itself or more than one pattern is possible. From the perspective of a trained ear, it can seem very obvious how to play along to practically any song but what’s the best way to find out when it absolutely is NOT obvious.

Here are a few steps that I would suggest to help you.

I'd like you to try this for yourself over the coming weeks to identify any questions you still may have about doing this for yourself.

Let's take all the skills we've learned so far over 3 different song examples to see how you're doing.

Can you recognise the strumming pattern? Choose the correct notation for each and perform them comfortably?