Most beginner guitarists soon find out that one of the hardest things to do once they have some chord shapes down is to actually strum in time. Aside from the difficulty of chord changes, comes the additional challenge of using the opposite hand to strum the strings and play a rhythm without stopping. In this lesson you will learn a few tips that will help you separate the left and right hands so that you can properly strum in time.

First off, this lesson is not going to focus on chord changes at all. Second, this lesson is aimed at those of you who really haven't learned how to strum in time on the guitar yet. Even those of you who think you can already strum in time will benefit from playing along to the videos we provide here. We will only be using one chord - E minor. If you don't know how to play this chord, here is a tab - the numbers signify which fret to play, with a 0 representing an open string:

1E|--0----||
2B|--0----||
3G|--0----||
4D|--2----||
5A|--2----||
6E|--0----||

We're also going to use two letters to signify whether we are going to strum down on the strings (D), or up (U). D = strum down, from the 6th string to the first string. U = strum upwards, from the 1st string to the 6th string. The first tip when it comes to strumming, is that you want it to be a continuous rhythm. This means that your strumming hand should be constantly in motion as this will give you the best feel and sound.

All these example are going to be in 4/4 time. If you don't understand or don't know what that is, to put it simply, each measure of music will have 4 beats.

Step 1

The first strum we're going to start off with is just a down strum on an E minor chord. If we have 4 beats in one measure, we will just be strumming down on the first beat of each measure. This is considered to be a whole note, or a note that lasts 4 beats. The video below demonstrates this strumming pattern repeated a number of times, so try to play along.

    D
E|--0----|| Repeat x4
B|--0----||
G|--0----||
D|--2----||
A|--2----||
E|--0----||

Watch the video

Step 2

For the next step, we are going to strum downwards on every two beats. This means that in a measure of music with 4 beats, we are strumming on beats 1 and 3. This is twice as fast as our first step, and each strum will last half of a measure. We will be strumming 'Half Notes'.

    D  D
E|--0--0----|| x4
B|--0--0----||
G|--0--0----||
D|--2--2----||
A|--2--2----||
E|--0--0----||

Watch the video

Step 3

For this next example, we're going to strum downwards on every single beat. We will be strumming 'Quarter Notes' here.

    D  D  D  D
E|--0--0--0--0----|| x4
B|--0--0--0--0----||
G|--0--0--0--0----||
D|--2--2--2--2----||
A|--2--2--2--2----||
E|--0--0--0--0----||

Watch the video

Step 4

For the next step, we are going to add in 'upstrokes' in between each quarter note. This will sound twice as fast as the previous example, and will be a little harder to stay on time. In this example, we are strumming 'Eighth Notes'. If you find upstrokes to be hard, practice doing this a number of times by yourself before you try playing along with the video below.

    D  U  D  U  D  U  D  U
E|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0----|| x2
B|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0----||
G|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0----||
D|--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2----||
A|--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2----||
E|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0----||

Watch the video

Step 5

Now that you can play eighth notes, we're going try a new rhythm where we will cut out certain strokes from Step 4. The strums that will be cut are the upbeat of beat 1, and the upbeat of beat 3. This ends up being a repeated pattern of D-DU.

    D     D  U  D     D  U
E|--0-----0--0--0-----0--0----|| x2
B|--0-----0--0--0-----0--0----||
G|--0-----0--0--0-----0--0----||
D|--2-----2--2--2-----2--2----||
A|--2-----2--2--2-----2--2----||
E|--0-----0--0--0-----0--0----||

Watch the video

Now that you have the ability to play these rhythms in time, try practicing them for a while.

Final step

Finally, here is a video for you to check out that sort of summarizes everything and serves as a good source to practice guitar strumming.

Watch the video