Strumming Along

When my sister-in-law showed me some of the cool strumming patterns her teacher had given her to practice, I realized I'd been missing something crucial. On my haphazard way to guitar mediocrity, I'd been focusing mainly on memorizing as many chord patterns as possible. As long as I could sing loudly enough, I reasoned, all I would need to do was hit the right chord every once in a while.

Not so, I'm afraid. A strumming pattern really can make or break a song. It is the difference between a quiet accompaniment and a sparkling interpretation. While I can muddle around a little until I find a strum that I like, it may not be the most consistent of beasts. So, I was very grateful when my sis-in-law generously shared her marked-up sheet music with me.

Among the pieces she gave me is "Brown-Eyed Girl," a song I can never hear without remembering a professor's horror stories about seeing a live Van Morrison performance. Apparently, during this concert, Mr. Morrison was a volatile, angry performer who would sort of lash out at the audience and throw tantrums and quit playing in the middle of songs. Hard to imagine that when you're swaying to a feel-good staple like his "Brown-Eyed Girl," isn't it?

Anyway, the prescribed strumming pattern—which omits the lovely little bridge that you're probably humming to yourself right now—is "down, down, up, rest, up, down." [For you beat counters out there, that's down (1 +), down (2), up (+), rest (3), up (+), down (4 +).] That double up with a rest in the middle is tricky for us beginners, so it took an hour or two to get that rhythm in my fingers. Then, suddenly, viola! I was playing "Brown-Eyed Girl," and I didn't even have to sing it to hear it.

The same strum was written out for the John Denver ballad "Leaving on a Jet Plane," which I pulled out next. Now that the strum was in my fingers, it was easy to try it out with a new set of chords. But something was off. Yes, the pattern was hitting the right notes, and yes, I could sing without a hitch over that rhythm, but the whole timbre of the song was wrong. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" isn't a jaunty pick-me-up like "Brown-Eyed Girl"—it's a quiet, melancholy poem. This is probably just an excuse to link to something "Glee"-related, but it should sound a little more like this version from "Glee"—with slow, melodic, open chords. My blocky little strumathon just wasn't working.

The lesson? One strum does not fit all. It's time to learn some others—and the words to "Brown-Eyed Girl," too!