I’ve learned the easy song above by ear and my goal is to make a quick video lesson about it, but I’ve run into a problem.
Even though I can play the strumming patterns, I’m having a hard time writing them down.
I’ve already watched Justin’s rhythm maestro videos and I can write down 8th note strumming patterns but I haven’t found a similar lesson about 16th note patterns and IF I’m not mistaken, the song is in 4/4 and the intro is 16th notes strumming.
The way I understand it, the intro pattern goes half bar of A, half bar of E, half D-half E and then repeats itself and that’s 4 bars using 16th note strumming.
If I got it wrong, any help would be much appreciated
If I got it right, please someone with music writing skills, help me to write down the intro pattern and I will use it as a base for future patterns.
The whole song goes A-E-D-E but the guitar is tune half a step down.
For 16th note strumming, , assuming 4/4, each beat is further subdivided by 4.
So at the basic level, for each quarter note 'one beat - its 4 x 16th notes joined together with a double bar. Then ditch the beats that arent played, so to speak, to create your pattern
Finding the score of a song you know well will also be very helpful.
Writing 16th note rhythms is indeed a tricky thing. I find standard musical notation and counting to be almost useless for this…at least at my current level of playing.
Not quite what you are asking here, but you might find some useful ideas in this old topic I started.
Again, not quite about writing down strumming patterns…
…but from an instructional video standpoint, I find the “Let’s Play All” YouTube channel does the best job of demonstrating strumming patterns that I’ve seen.
Skip to the 1:15 mark for a good example.
Note that he shows the Tab onscreen, but the strumming is not shown on the tab…you have to watch the video section…possibly over and over again - which can be tedious.
If I can find an accurate tab (and that’s a big if!), I generally find it’s best to pencil in the up and down strums on the sheet. Then I can just practice the difficult sections from the sheet…going as slow as I need to.
Otherwise, I just hand write a chord sheet, and write in the up and down strums as needed.
Unfortunately, I can’t attach a file to this post, but if you go to https://songnotes.net/tools/blank-tabs , you can download tab sheets with 4:4 8th note, 4:4 16th note, 3:4 and 6:8 timing noted on them. I use these when I’m trying to transcribe a riff and the timing is hard for me to feel.
I don’t write them either but if I’m to make a tutorial and just play the pattern and expect everyone to just play it by ear, well it’s not much of a tutorial and they may as well listen to the original song and try it themselves.
I had written down a pattern and it is almost identical to yours - but when I “read” and play, I must slow it down too much, because my reading skills are slower than my hands and then the pattern sounds nothing like the song. So, I wasn’t sure if the pattern was correct.
I’ve had a similar problem to this but one possible approach is to use an app to record your playing and speed it up (it’s better just to practice on muted strings when hunting for a rhythm IMO) or to take the recording and slow it down. Neither are perfect but it might help get you in the right ball park
FYI, you could just use youtube to play the song slower, click on the gear icon and then “Playback speed”. It’s a bit easier than fooling around with audacity.
Actually it’s pretty easy with audacity - you just change the tempo on the lower left corner.
You can also loop a part of the audio to practice it and you can also change the pitch which is very useful in songs where the guitar is tuned lower or higher - such as in this particular song.
Without this option, I would have to tune my guitar a semitone lower, just for this song.
Cheers!
