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Mike Olekshy
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Joined: 09/21/10
Posts: 1,051
Mike Olekshy
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Joined: 09/21/10
Posts: 1,051
03/21/2020 1:16 pm

Hi John - glad you enjoyed the lesson!

The actual strum pattern is more of a bluegrass style strum. It goes pretty quickly, so you'll want to practice it slowly at first.

The made easy version plays one strum per click (or hi-hat strike). To get more authentic like the record, you'll want to play 2 downstroke strums in the time of the first made easy strum. That's 2 downstrokes per hi-hat strike.

The second made easy strum needs to have 4 strums - so it would be a downstroke, upstroke, downstroke, upstroke in the spot where the second made easy strum plays just one.

Repeat that pattern for the next 2 clicks (or hi-hat strikes).

So your strum pattern for an entire bar of 4/4 would be:

D / D / | D U D U | D / D / | D U D U

Note that the first and third set of D / D / have slashes in between - that's because you have evenly spaced the strums for the time between the first and second click, while the D U D U are played faster because you are playing 4 strums in the same amount of time (between the 2nd and 3rd click).

Hopefully this makes sense - let me know how it goes!

Mike

Originally Posted by: Runner360

Hi Mike, Just finished your lesson for Seven Bridges Road (made easy).

I really enjoyed the lesson, my stumming is still not very good but with this song it was ok. Just wondering what the correct strumming pattern is or could you give me one I could use with this song to push myself a little more. Thanks again.

John


Keep rockin!
Mike Olekshy
GT Guitar Coach