If the rhythm is what your having trouble with, then just eliminate the chords all together and practice playing the rhythm only on muted strings at first. 90 percent of rhythm comes from just alternate strumming. The very first off beat on each phrase (the slide) is played with a down strum in this case, but I think that’s really the only exception to the rule.

This is not difficult. It is just alternate picking. Of course, don’t try and do this at top speed, do it slower (50%). Then try sounding out one single chord over the rhythm and the rest of the notes are muted.

There are several different rhythms here. Which bars are giving you trouble?

Here is a close up of the strumming pattern. I exaggerated the motion some, but hope you get the idea.

Norbert, I think you are misunderstanding the underlying simplicity of it all. This is just down, up, down, up over and over. There is no complicated picking or strumming. The difficulty stems from not doing enough rhythm exercises in general that classify as normal alternate strumming rhythms. All the down strokes fall on down beats, and all the up strokes fall on the off beats. It’s that simple.

The only exception is the very first part of the phrase where the chord is formed a half step lower and slid into. That down stroke actually happens on the AND of FOUR which is an off beat. Here are bars 2 through 5 at the very beginning of the song to get you started.

So your strumming hand is always going to be moving up/down over the meat of the parts as shown above. There is a gap right where the slide occurs and it all starts grooving on beat 2 normally after that. So every time there is a slide into a chord, it is going to have that little gap. Hope that makes sense. I’m not going to get any deeper than that, because it is not necessary. You’re going to have to learn basic strumming patterns. I think it is not good to over analyze how to strum, it’s going to make things even more difficult. It’s something you have to feel during your practice of basic rhythms.

I highly recommend just listening to two bars in a loop and then playing the rhythm you just heard. This is the same process I use to absorb something new as well and it works. The only time it doesn’t work is when there is indeed a tricky picking pattern involved. But this is not one of those cases in this lesson.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 19 hours ago by Michael Krailo.
• This reply was modified 6 days, 19 hours ago by Michael Krailo.
• This reply was modified 6 days, 18 hours ago by Michael Krailo.