Beginners strumming patterns – Pt.5 – ‘Wonderwall’ style strumming

Hi there,

In this blog we are going to introduce ‘ties’ to our sixteenth note strumming to be able to play a very cool 1 bar pattern that can be used for millions of songs.

Here’s the pattern before we deconstruct it:

The first 2 beats is the common 2 beat pattern from the last blog:

So we count that as 1 2 +a

Beat 3 without the tie would look like this:

We would count this beat as 3e+

With the tie on beat 3 you are just going to miss the first downstroke. Beat 4 is the same pattern as beat 2.

So when you get the whole pattern going you can probably hear straight away how nice it sounds. Songs like Wonderwall by Oasis and Weather with you by Crowded House use these type of patterns. Having the tie on the start of the pattern really makes it sound nice and you’ll be able to use it for lots of songs.

So practice this with various different chord progressions and see if you can change chords within the bar as well.

Many thanks for reading

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James Schofield

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