The Third Strumming Pattern Lesson

Our third strumming pattern consist of leaving a specific beat empty of action. This strumming pattern gradually makes you play the song with style and somewhat in a carefree mode. Its also good to keep in mind that the first strumming move somewhat gives the impression of a more heavier stroke than the succeeding ones as is what usually happens in any musical score. In our strumming lessons, for the meantime I recommend that you only use your thumb and not the whole four fingers in your downward stroke and use only your forefinger at the upward stroke. If you use the whole four fingers at the downward stroke it will produce a noisy, sharp, dominating tones not ideal to do at an early learning stage because you are suppose to be learning to produce the sound in a milder and observable way. As we go learning different strumming patterns, you also are being brought into appreciating different music genre.
In this illustration below, if you're not still familiar to cope up learning through note representations, you must follow strictly the normal speaking manner of the phrase on the fourth row cause it precisely give the correct strum accent. Notice that the fifth beat which falls always in beat "3" was encircled to denote that its always empty of strumming action. When it says empty of strumming action, I mean you can still perform the movement of your hand in beat "3" in order for you not to loose your beating rhythm or momentum but you must not touch the strings at this point. This may take constant looking at the phrase and with steady repetition to familiarize the strumming style or you can just remember those two words "you" and "buzzed" as the points where you are not going to touch the strings. After constant practice, try playing this without looking at the phrase to gain the true feel of the play.
In this style you will learn how to play the likes of some good country or folk music like "A Horse With No Name by America, "Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Elvis Presley and many more. When you happened to hear the original version of the music, some instrumentation or some movements may be added to the music so just stick to our strumming pattern in order not to be disoriented. The encircled portion are only shown in order for you to map it clearly where you've been through, to allow you to see the difference between strumming patterns and to acquaint your hand to strumming changes.