Semi-quaver strumming patterns and knocking on heavens door – Bob Dylan

HI there,

In my last blog you were shown how to play crotchets/quavers/semi-quavers and how to count + strum them.

Now what you want to be able to do is have a mixture of these rhythms to increase variety.

A common strumming pattern that I teach in lessons and seems to come up time and time again is the Down, Down, Down, up pattern.

This pattern is a 2 beat pattern that’s repeated twice in every bar (of 4 beats) and is a really good one to start changing between 2 chords in 1 bar.

Here it is below:

Now as you can see beats 1 + 3 are crotchets and last for 1 beat.

beats 2 and 4 are made up of 3 notes each.

Now the first half of beat 2 is a quaver so that should be counted as ‘2’

the second part of that beat is 2 semi-quavers so this would be the ‘+ A’ of the beat.

So you’d count this as ‘2 + A’

You wouldn’t need to count the ‘E’ in beat 2 as the quaver covers the 2 and the ‘E’

Also pay attention to the strumming pattern. This coincides with how you strum crotchets/quavers and semi-quavers.

Here’s an audio clip below that will show the 2 beat pattern alone, and then repeated to make the full bar:

DDDU

So now you can play hundreds of songs that use this very common pattern. Take Knockin’ on heavens door for example:

and then part 2:

This song is great as it has 4 chords and repeats them over and over again:

Check this audio sample for help:

KNOCKIN ON HD