How To Learn Ukulele Strumming Patterns

Your correct mitt is the engine of your ukulele and strumming is oft the throttle.

Learning how to properly ability the strings will have you a long means towards ukulele proficiency. With only a couple ukulele strumming patterns and a niggling feel you lot can play most songs assuredly.

Jump to:

• Hand position
• Downstrum
• Upstrum
• Down & upwardly
• Strumming patterns
• Somewhere Over The Rainbow strum
• Other strumming resources
• The secret to keen strumming
• How to figure out strums

Get above and beyond with:

It'due south THE detailed strumming and picking guide.

• 60 pages of step-by-footstep pedagogy
• 70 images of the techniques
• 24 MP3 examples of how it should sound

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The Basic Ukulele Strumming Patterns:

The fancy stuff can wait. To get-go out on the correct foot, make sure yous tin nail these down and up motions.

Hand Position

Hold your strumming hand in a "pistol" shape and "allow the air out of it" and then that your index finger curls in to a loose 90 degree angle to the rest of your hand and the pollex rests (lightly) on the alphabetize finger'southward 1st knuckle. This is the default ukulele strumming position.

Two angles of the bones strumming hand position

Downstrum

Brush beyond all the strings in a downwards movement with your index finger. Twist your wrist downwards a scrap so that your finger hits the strings at an angle. This helps avert jamming your fingers in between the strings. You tin likewise relax your strumming finger so that it bounces over each string similar a spring.

The best place to showtime strumming the strings is close to where the neck meets the body of the ukulele. This is where the best tone is produced and where the string gives your finger the to the lowest degree amount of resistance.

Strumming in other places will yield different sounds and should be experimented with, merely take information technology one step at a time and starting time where information technology'southward piece of cake.

Try playing some downstrums on your ukulele to a rhythm: 1…2…3…four… This will be a simple down, downwards, down, downward strumming pattern. Consistency is the key. Practise this until y'all experience comfortable.

Upstrum

The next step is to add an upstrum in between each downwardly strum, merely to start let's just focus on the upstrum.

Simply reverse the motions of the downstrum and drag your index finger back up the fashion it came. Again, you can twist your wrist and let your finger loosen upwards a chip too easily cross the strings.

Practice this motion on its own, just strumming upward while counting.

Downward & Up

Once downwards and up are simple on their ain, combine both motions and strum down, then up.

In between each strum yous'll accept to change the bending of your wrist and index finger. Always angle your finger and then that it bounces across the strings going both directions.

I similar to remember of this bobbing arm and mitt move as coming from 50% wrist twist and l% arm "hammering."

Thumb Strum

For reasons that are beyond me, many people naturally gravitate towards strumming everything with their thumb.

This is fine. At that place's not really anything "wrong" about it and some songs tin can benefit from the mellow audio of a simple thumb downstroke.

However, I tend to encourage people away from this way of strumming simply because it's not a very expandable motion – the style the thumb hits the strings limits your options for chunking, and different tones.

Similar most things on ukulele, you lot've got to exist patient with your strumming progress and non go racing alee.

Spend a couple weeks just strumming down/up until it's very natural. Larn a couple simple songs and focus on getting the strumming as smooth as possible.

Equally y'all "chalangalang" (a fancy proper name for a swinging downward/upwardly strum), yous'll be developing muscle retentiveness that will be vitally useful for other strum patterns.

Clamper Strum

The clamper – or chop – strum is a pop decoration to any gimmicky strumming pattern. I made a separate lesson page for it:

Learn the clamper strum

Swing & Directly Feels

When y'all strum down and up you lot are creating a rhythm. If yous examine the rhythm y'all'll come across that all the downstrums happen on the count: 1…2…3…4… If yous only play downstrums you're basically counting the song in quarter notes.

Upstrums happen between the counts. They can also be "counted" by naming the upstrums "and" (frequently notated with "+").

In this style yous can count: (ane) and (2) and (three) and (4) and to play only the upstrums.

Combine both downwards and upwardly motions and yous get the whole shebang: 1 + ii + iii + four +. Now we've divided iv counts into 8th notes.

Whatever time you play eighth notes they tin have a "feel." This falls into one of two categories: swing (also "shuffle") or direct.

Direct is the most uncomplicated to visualize: information technology's completely even betwixt 2 eighth notes. Both "sides" are the same duration – like the ticking of a clock or the swing of a pendulum.

Swing, on the other hand, makes the notes lopsided. Loooong, brusque, looong, short. This gives the strum a galloping feel.

Funny matter is, gravity works in favor of a swing strum which is why most people naturally play ukulele strumming patterns with this feel. Your mitt drops hands with gravity, merely then y'all pull it up with effort and then let it autumn again equally soon every bit possible so you lot don't take to waste matter whatsoever energy. This naturally creates a long, curt swing experience.

Here's a video caption and demonstration of the two feel styles:

Learn to play both every bit most songs sound better with one or the other.

Strumming Tips Video Lesson

Here's a tutorial on some quick tricks to help amend your strumming.

Common Ukulele Strumming Patterns

Once you've spent sufficient fourth dimension practicing the basic strum, you lot tin expand upon it by learning some different strumming patterns. These follow the aforementioned general down/up motions, just in different orders and timings.

D=down, U=upwardly, (space)=rest, Ten=chop.

There are only a few core strumming patterns before you break into more circuitous techniques and ideas, only these here will keep your hand/mind coordination busy!

D DU UD

This one is used in a lot of contemporary Hawaiian songs and is most people's default "island" sounding strum.

The hand move is downwards, down, upwardly, up, down.

Since there are double downs and double ups, you must sometimes move in the reverse direction without strumming to get dorsum to your starting betoken. This essentially makes the hand move for this strum just a simple D/U pattern. The only departure is that y'all are but strumming the strings some of the time. The rest of the fourth dimension you lot are skipping strums fifty-fifty though your mitt is still moving.

This is key: Continue your manus moving the entire fashion through the strum blueprint!

Here's the timing:

ane + 2 + 3 + 4 + D - D U - U D -

With the "invisible strums" and keeping your hand moving the unabridged time:

1 + 2 + three + four + D(U)D U(D)U D(U)

U U U U – Reggae Strum

Also known as a "skank," this reggae strum is incredibly simple to embrace. Playing information technology however, is quite a fob in itself at first. The key lies in the amount of time you permit your chords ring.

It's a complex plenty subject that I've created an entire iii piece video serial and a detailed lesson page to cover everything you need to know virtually reggae ukulele:

How to Play a Reggae Ukulele Strum

The "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" Strumming Pattern

Of all the ukulele strums people want to learn, it seems the one Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole used on Somewhere Over the Rainbow/Wonderful Globe is on the tiptop of the list.

Information technology'due south not hard, just combines both picking and strumming to create a more hybrid blueprint. This is a great instance of how effective a simple ukulele style tin exist.

To play the Somewhere Over The Rainbow strumming pattern you demand to loosen upwards and encourage a little bounce in your manus. The motions are:

• Choice the top (One thousand) cord with your pollex. This is where the bounce comes in. Yous have to motility your mitt up equally you selection so y'all can be set to play the adjacent downstrum.
• Then strum downwards, upward – down, upward. There's a hesitation between the down, ups.

Pick, downwards, upward, down, up.

Don't make information technology more complicated than information technology needs to exist! As long as you get the bounce in your pick, you'll be fine.

The chords for the intro are: C Em Am F. Apply the above strum to them and you should be well on your way. IZ plays with a low-G cord on his ukulele and so if your "pick" sounds too high, that might be the reason.

Here it is in tab:

Other Strum Pattern Resources

Since I keep a uncomplicated approach to strumming I'll allow others create huge libraries of strum patterns and just link to their great work.

Al Forest over at Uke Hunt has put together some cracking audio examples of his top uke strumming patterns.

Ukulele Become has an even larger selection with 32 patterns and a video demoing each i.

As long as you can count, you tin can figure these out. Only delight remember that at the end of the 24-hour interval, knowing 100 strumming patterns doesn't mean jack if you can't use them well in a musical way. So pick a few favorite strums and learn to use them well in your favorite songs.

The Secret to Corking Strumming

I've spent a lot of years as a teacher chirapsia my caput against a wall and wondering how to present strumming to students. They always want more, more, more than strums and I want to teach less, less, less strums.

Why?

Because they (with a small handful of exceptions over the years) loose the rhythm as presently as they start to think about the new strum. If you lose the rhythm to gain a strum, what's the signal?

This is very frustrating for me equally it often doesn't ameliorate very much with a lesson (or several) worth of practice. When this happens I don't feel like I've helped them play better music. I've simply given them a distraction.

Fortunately, over years of thinking virtually this, I've made a few useful connections in my listen.

Information technology starts with asking:

Why do beginners loose the groove when learning strums?

Considering they go almost instantly from thinking nearly the music to thinking about the movement.

Problem is, they don't KNOW the motion. And often only resort to guessing equally best they can.

This manifests as robotic rhythm and unnatural hand movements. Which sometimes work, merely more often than not don't.

The solution?

A Steady Eighth Note Motion

8th notes are counted like this:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

If you lot strum with those counts you get:

D U D U D U D U

Now I'm going to make a assuming statement:

There is no reason your paw shouldn't brand this motion AT ALL TIMES when you're strumming, no thing the pattern.

At that place are two qualifiers for this statement:

1. You're a beginner/intermediate
2. The strum is an eighth notation strum

Yous wonder:

"Brad, how does your hand strum down, up if the pattern does something too that?"

Because that's the motion. Remember how I said people go lost when they start thinking almost the motility?

Don't change it.

What IS different is that for any eighth note strum besides downwardly, up, you lot volition skip playing on certain beats. Y'all won't skip the motion, only instead avoid sounding the notes as you go past.

Grab your ukulele. Make a strumming motion on it without hitting the strings and making noise. This is done simply past moving your paw out and abroad from yous ever and so slightly.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, right?

Now try this strum:

1 + ii + 3 + iv + D   D   D   D

Discover what you are doing on the "+" of each beat.

Unless you have two easily on your right arm (you lot'd be the envy of the uke world), you're ghost strumming up on the "+" without sounding the strings.

So while the strum sounds similar this:

1 + 2 + 3 + four + D   D   D   D

It LOOKS like this:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + D U D U D U D U

Now allow'southward try the archetype DDUUD strum. Information technology oftentimes trips people up the first time they endeavor information technology. The ones who get it hands are the ones who retain the steady 8th motion.

It sounds like this:

1 + ii + 3 + four + D   D U   U D

Merely if you picket a player who'southward comfy with the strum it LOOKS similar this:

1 + two + 3 + iv + D U D U D U D U

I invite you lot to check out Ukulele Become's page on 32 strumming patterns if yous haven't already. They are all eighth note strums which is perfect practice for this.

Play through each 1. And instead of thinking of a new motion, simply keep steady eighths going the whole time and change which strums you skip.

For instance, #24 sounds similar this:

1 + 2 + iii + 4 +   U D   D   D

Merely play it like this (strums in assuming and underlined):

i + 2 + iii + iv + D                      U                                D                    U                      D                    U                      D                    U

How to Figure Out Strums

99% of songs tin be cleaved down into even eighth notation chunks. That means, while perhaps not very musical, an eighth note strum should fit nearly songs.

Some will exist straight eighths, some will be swing eighths. Doesn't thing.

Listen to the song and play along with your 8th strum motion (if yous don't know the chords, mute the strings). Information technology probably won't audio very good.

If you take trouble finding the beat, read up on timing.

As you play, listen for the potent beats of the vocal – places with more accent than others. This is likely a place to keep a strum.

Try to make up one's mind on a calibration of one to five the importance of each count and its 8th note. If you desire to write it out – go ahead. This volition become an instant assessment in the future, but sometimes information technology helps to do things the long style first.

Go rid of as many low-number strums equally you feel is appropriate. This creates syncopation and sway and will sound a million times amend than plain eighths.

At that place are always many variations possible on whatever song. The more comfortable with this thought you become, the more you volition find.

Source: https://liveukulele.com/lessons/strums/

Posted by: myerstoop1998.blogspot.com

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