 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel, welcome to another one of our lessons. In this guitar strumming lesson, we are basically going to use 16th note patterns pretty much throughout. 16th note basically means you divide the beat into four equal units or swinging units, you could swing these divisions as well, very different than an 8th note division which is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and where you are dividing the beat into two units 3 and 4 and with 16th you are going 1e and 2e and 3e and 4e and 4 divisions for every pulse, right? So what is going to happen is you are not going to necessarily play these rhythms faster, you are just going to have more interesting points to place your respective hit points at. A lot of these rhythms are going to probably just start with muted sounds which you do with your left hand and you continue strumming in the right hand, so you get this muted sound and then you start inducing certain chord hits, for example a G major chord wherever need be. There we go, right, so most of the patterns will have that endless strumming pattern so if you do not hear an actual chord you are going to hear some kind of a noise and I think more than it is sounding very, very groovy which I think those ghost notes are very, very important for, it also helps up a musician like me or I am sure you also keep in time when your hand kind of goes like this endlessly. Then for the lesson we are just going to take very open chords like C major, E major, maybe E7, A minor, F, G, E minor, very simple open chords are going to be used for this lesson. So get out your guitars and let's get started right away and before we do don't forget to hit that subscribe button, hit the bell icon for regular notifications, leave us a comment, like the video, share the video if possible and now let's get cracking. So we have five sixteenth note based or accented guitar patterns with a lot of percussion, all are very groovy, very popular, very funky if you want to use that word and I thought what better rhythm to start off with than a Latin rhythm or a salsa rhythm which is popularly known as the song claveo which basically feels like this, you hear this a lot right ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta so these hit points are what we want to generate on the guitar. So you go with the pulse but that's not how we are going to play it ok you could start maybe you could start with the accents let's say over a C major chord and where are the points at one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a one e and a and and four one e and a two e and and four and if you observe your foot or your leg or your pulse needs to always be there while you play a sixteenth note groove otherwise it can run away from you very quickly and your band or your drummer are not going to be very happy so slow it a bit one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a one e and a two e and a four one e and a two e and a three and a four a little faster now when you take this with a chord context let's say a C major chord these are the hits with a little bit of muting or stopping that's the clave one e and a two e and a three so how I generally like to play the clave is instead of doing these you know unless you're doing like George Michael's faith that's pretty much the pattern of that song which is very choppy very 80s glam glamish what you could do is you could just maintain a nice consistent vibe of just going down stroke up stroke slightly quicker since it's sixteenth notes and then play the pattern using actual chord sounds or sounding chords as opposed to the ghost so your left hand is going to work on the actual chord and the nothing the ghost or the mute as we call it so it goes something like one e and a two e and start with this all goes one e and a two e and a now bring in the chords at the clave hits which are one e that's the patterns your hand is essentially going with the start slow let's take a g chord something different so at no point am I not doing this movement right if you have a plectrum you can do it pretty much the same way I just prefer to use my fingers that's how I've been learning or playing for all these years I probably because I'm also a piano player so fingers work a lot better than the thing which you hold so something like this so you go try to get a nice clean sound with your ghostings and your mutings you don't want to you don't want to buzz things you don't want to ring things and things like that I'm sure you already know that if you've played the guitar you know that you know that those buzzes and some random harmonics which may come so you need to work on your the quality of the sound that is also very important that's what even someone like me continues to try and do to this day right guys so that was a song clave you can also play the song clave in a couple of interesting ways first of all you can do it either straight or swing so this is the straight version and this is the swing version swing you may want to play it slightly slower feel the swing you could start with just the hits then swing it and also thus bringing in the ghost notes or keep it straight straight doesn't mean faster neither does swing it's the same tempo you're just altering that the the inside beats or the sub beats or the subdivisions by moving them slightly later okay the other thing you could do is have maybe two chords over one bar like you could take it as one two three one two one two three one two or you could have three chords in a bar so do consider those possibilities like you could do G G G F F G G G B flat G G G F F C C C D D E you can get all that vibe going on for you so do consider getting used to the clave then getting options of swinging it and straightening it and then obviously changing your chords playing around but start off with just maybe just a nice muted ghosted kind of a feel let's move on to the next exciting rhythm pattern right so the next rhythm pattern is very inspired by reggae I guess you could actually call it a reggae guitar rhythm pattern so what happens in a with in reggae with respect to what the guitar does the guitar generally plays the chord hits at the ans of the bar of a four so if you take one and two and three and four and two and so what you want to do is maybe take a C major chord like this one and three and four first practice just doing upstrokes and the downstrokes will really not really be there you kind of go down but you're going down to mute the guitar so the sound is only coming with respect to our upstrokes okay so this is one aspect of the reggae feel so try this out everything's gonna be alright now everything's gonna be alright everything's gonna be also what I'm trying to do when I'm muting it I'm trying to focus on the noise I'm making with that percussion the guitars are very percussive instrument so you don't want to just bring your hand down randomly you want to also hear the quality of the sound and figure out if you like that you know and slowly but surely work on that sound as you keep practicing right you could also if you have the opportunity you can connect the guitar to an amplifier or a speaker or a microphone and try to listen to what what it sounds like you know this sound you know so you could go different ways you could try and kind of knock on the guitar a bit or you can just get the nice the string slapping kind of sound so that's the basic idea of reggae but it's not complete unless you add an element of swing which is what the genre like so what was once this can now become so what's happening there one knee and two E and three E and four E and so maybe every alternate beat you could add a double and go in an in a sixteenth swing one knee and two E two E so at the two E I'm creating both strokes so or at the four but both the two and the four if you're not able to get the that extra 16 note ghost it's fine you can just go just up strokes but work on your muting then that ghost tada go through the notation go through the hit points and try to count one E and a two E and a three and a four E and a it'll really help and eventually of course you make it very natural to the body as you play try to always relax stay in a relaxed environment while you do this stuff let's move on to the next rhythm right the next 16 note pattern includes an interesting accent some percussion lot of ghost notes lot of offbeat variations as well so let me play it for you and try to slow it down and guide you as to what all is going on one E and a two E and a three and a four E and I will be the ideal way to go about the counting process that's how it's been and that's how it's going to be in this lesson so it's one E and so you do two downs down down so let's get that first one E and a two and a one and two and a one E and get this first so that's where it goes a bit off so the first two beats are you can also vocalize it you can just do something with your voice to motivate your guitar to get it done so this the first two beats only so so moving forward with all the four beats one E and a two E and a mute E and four one E and a two E and a mute E and a four E and a one E and a I like that that random not so random very exciting percussion noise which I'm which I've introduced at the three so one tan tan tadatadantan so it kind of chokes the sound at the three and also gives you that percussion which you need in the guitar right so now you could do a couple of ghosts or continue strumming the same chord at the and and the E of the four but if you're getting bored at the four four E and then the and and the E can be played either with ghosts or with the same chord right there a nice preparatory thing to do before you actually work on this could actually be to take some time off and maybe do this sort of an exercise you do you do two downs at the eighths and then do four sixteenth notes down up down up but muted just to get your actual sounding chords and your ghosted chord so you go down down down down mute down down mute for mute that itself is quite a nice rhythm if you ask me and come back to what we have on hand now also what I like to do is accent the two play the two a little stronger so and even the four could be accented let's do it with a nice pulse okay let's just take it a bit slower accents at the two and the four and also the ghosting or the muted or the percussive sound at the three and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two so that's the next pattern for you which uses ghost notes some accents as well as that nice percussion sound which the guitar always brings let's move on to pattern number four pattern number four again sixteenth note based one E and a two E and a three and a four E and a the way I'm I've constructed it is I'm doing one E and a and then I'm keeping some silence there so you could do the silence as you could stop the guitar or what I like to do is just toggle between the actual chord in the ghost so one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a so you see what's happening there some a lot of off beats after the one E and happens it just goes completely off the the grid so to speak that it is actually in the grid but in the sixteenth note dividing by four grid so one E and a two E and a three E E and okay so after you do one E and then it's just going to be E's and ours throughout the piece no on beats no and beats so let me demonstrate that again one E and a two a two will be ghosted one E and a two E and a three E and a and in some cases at the ghost notes instead of actually doing that you could also kind of make the percussive noise demonstrated throughout this lesson so things like that could come into the play if not just go through the pattern which is notated for you down up down down up down ghost ghost okay after down up down it just goes up down up up up up change could try and get that snare drum like sound versus the ghosted sound you could do either one which suits you better again let's do this slightly slower one E and E love this rhythm can go on and on with this rhythm actually let's move on now to the last pattern for this lesson you're gonna really like it do stay tuned and let's move on. Us pattern for the video guys, this one basically is what I call as the 3-3-2 feel generated over 16th notes. So if you hear what I just played, you can actually go, these are where the accents are. It's almost like a thresio, which we call it one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a pa. So all those were ghosts just to show you the accents. So one E and a two. So first get the accents. I think that is very important. So one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two E Now, the whole pattern is based on, first two beats are down, down, up, down, down, okay. What's nice or what I like to do when I'm practicing all these patterns, if they are different, if they are not copy pasted two beats at a time, what you could end up doing could be do just two beats and practice those two beats as another rhythm and then piece it together with the next two beats. For example, just do that. Also, let the bar, let the thing continue. Just get that. So, what's the first two beats? Down, down, up, down, down. So, what about beats three and four now? Let's work on that. So, that's down, up, down, down, down, up. Right, now we piece it together. The key is to accent at the one, accent just means try to play the chord a lot harder. So, one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two E and a then the jump, the power, tick a boom. Simple chords, right. It actually sounds good even without chords. So, maybe you could start with like just percussion. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. That's why I call it the three, three, two feel because you feel like going in one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two. So, start with some mutes or ghost. It still sounds quite cool if you ask me. Bring in a couple of chords and work on your accents. It's a very important rhythm to have accents. So, I hope I've communicated quite a few important things about strumming in this video. We need to work on our ghosting or muting along with some nice percussive elements on the guitar. Then we need to look at improving our study of accents, improving our counting in general where we need to go one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a, and this was not really a chord lesson as such, but you could start with any chords or any chord progression you know. And as always, search for a sound which you like best. Just keep playing, keep adapting and evolving and see what works for you best, you know, and try to stay as relaxed as possible when you're playing the guitar and use your foot for the pulse as much as possible or use your head or your body to move to the music. That is very, very important. Metronome may be a bit overrated. Do that later once you're sure of your own body's timing. When you have your own internal clock running, then you could use things like a metronome and other fancier tools. Right, guys? Hope you found the lesson useful. This was five slightly intermediate strumming patterns because I use sixteenth notes with accents and stuff. Do stay tuned for more lessons from Nathaniel. We'll be doing theory, we'll be doing ear training, we'll be doing composition, we'll be doing obviously piano, which the channel seems to do a lot of and a lot more on different subjects in the field of music. You could also head over to our Patreon page where this entire set of guitar strumming patterns will be notated and available for you where you see exactly what you need to do and the visuals should hopefully help you nail these things going forward. Thanks a ton and I will see you in the next one or rather you will see me in the next one.