Hi, my name is Darren and I hope you enjoy the site I have made for you. The idea for this site came to me back in 2003. I had many students who were taking guitar lessons from me and they kept asking me how to play the rhythm to this or that song. They also asked me how I decided what strum pattern to use in my own songs. I looked for information on the web to help them out. I found plenty of sites about chords, scales, tab, solos, and various techniques. But to my shock there was very little information on rhythm and especially strumming. Over the next few years I started collecting the strum patterns I used or found in songs.

My original idea was to create a book that I could sell. I was a couple chapters in, when I decided a website was a much better way of getting that information out into the world. After six months and several site designs later, I created this site and first released it in March 2008. I have learned so much from other guitar related websites over the years that I felt this could be my way to give back to the guitar community.

A little about me now. I live in Tulsa where I made a living teaching guitar since about 2000. It's not amazing money by any stretch of the imagination, but I love what I do, and that's priceless. Before teaching, I went to Wheaton College where I graduated with a bachelors in music. I thought I wanted to move into writing and performing, but have found a great deal of joy in teaching instead. Though I like rockin' out on my electric, my main passion has always been for the acoustic guitar. There's just something so warm and natural about it's sound and you can take it almost anywhere!

Here's a video of me playing one of my own creations. It's called Giant. The tuning is AAEECE for those of you altered tuning buff's who like to know what every song is written in. I don't have tab's available or an MP3 yet, but if I get enough people requesting it maybe I'll put something up sometime.

Since this page is a labor of love from me, I ask that you do not distribute it on the internet. As of writing this page, the site hasn't even been on the internet for two months yet, and I've already logged near 200 hours working on it. I do all the graphics, coding, recording, writing and whatever else you can think of for this site. So if you like it, do me a favor and tell people about it! You can also make a donation if you'd like, anything helps. All the information on this site is free for your benifit as long as you are using it for your personal use. If you'd like to distribute any of the material or use it in a commercial setting then you'd need my permission first.

Thanks, and keep strumming!