guitar strum patterns & progressions

By now you should know how to read chord frames and be able to strum some chords in the key of "A".

Next we will introduce you to music staff and symbols. This is also used for instructional purposes.

The music staff has 5 lines and 4 spaces when used for standard musical notation and 6 lines and 5 spaces when used as tablature specifically for Guitar.

Tablature, or Tab for short, is like a cheat sheet or a short hand system used for reading music, without having to know how to read standard music. More on tab reading in lesson 5.

A measure is a unit of space between two bar lines.
A bar line is a vertical line dividing the staff.

The rhythm symbols tell us to strum down or up and how many times to strum a chord. This gives us a Strum Pattern.

A strum pattern is the combination of both down and up strumming that produces a particular rhythm for a musical arrangement or song

The exercise to the right uses the chords we learned in the previous lesson.

Each measure In this exercise has a Chord letter name above the staff and a rhythm pattern. This is called a progression.

A progression is a series of chords played in a particular sequence to create a song or a musical arrangement.

We can see that in this example the progression is
A-D-E-A.

It has 4 measures with 4 downward strums in each measure.

The first measure we strum the A chord 4 times downward. Then we strum the D chord 4 times in the second measure and so on.

Next try playing the same chord progression using the

down - up - down - up pattern.

listen

Next try the
down - down - down - up - down - up
strum pattern.

You would not believe how many songs you could play with just these three chords alone.

If we mix up the chord progression you will see what I mean.

Try these other chord progressions. Use any strum pattern you like.

E - A - D - A
E - D - A

Stum Patterns and Progressions.