strum pattern notation

2005marke · Nov 25, 2010

I am new to playing any instument, but have been playing the Uke for about 4 months, I have progressed through the basic beginners books, so have recently bought "the ukulele playlist" yellow book. However the strum pattern notation dosn't seem in the same format as the beginners books I have been using.
Most of the songs have all sorts of symbols that I don't not recognise, and the book doesn't have any key.

Can anyone help me out by pointing me to a site which explains this notation.

h00k00 · Nov 27, 2010

Could you add some pictures of those symbols?

2005marke · Nov 30, 2010

image of symbols

picture of the strum pattern.

Mandarb · Nov 30, 2010

This might help.... http://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/reading-musical-notation-part-2/

h00k00 · Nov 30, 2010

Never seen that notation being used, but I found this page: http://www.accessrock.com/BeginningLessons/guitarchordgrid.asp.

janeray1940 · Nov 30, 2010

I've never seen it done that way either, but my guess is that the rhythm is based on standard note values, which you can read up on here. I would think the slashes represent the strum, and the lines above them are "beams" which represent the duration. I would guess that first Em would be broken down into 6 strums, but the two that have two beams above them would be only half as long as the ones that only have one beam. Hopefully someone else can explain this better than I'm doing

misterpk · Nov 30, 2010

This is a pretty common method of noting rhythms. The strums are based on standard note values which note both a strum and the duration of the strum. The beams above them is a way to link the notes that get 1 beat. The line linking 2 notes under the notes is called a tie, and it means that the note should be held. For example, a half note (2 beats) could also be noted as a 2 quarter notes tied together.

The strum pattern as shown would translate to something like this:

D DUDUD D U U (then repeat)

D=down, U=up and a space is a rest.

Mandarb · Dec 1, 2010

misterpk said:
This is a pretty common method of noting rhythms. The strums are based on standard note values which note both a strum and the duration of the strum. The beams above them is a way to link the notes that get 1 beat. The line linking 2 notes under the notes is called a tie, and it means that the note should be held. For example, a half note (2 beats) could also be noted as a 2 quarter notes tied together.

The strum pattern as shown would translate to something like this:

D DUDUD D U U (then repeat)

D=down, U=up and a space is a rest.

As noted above - a very common method for noting rythyms. I just provided a link because I was too lazy to type out a nice explanation like you provided. Very well said misterpk.

strum pattern notation

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