Hi guitarists! Today, were going to take a look at how to make your own strum patterns. Before you try this lesson you should be
comfortable with quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes and ties. If you need to brush up on these, check out the rhythm
primer.

There are only a few ways to divide up a single beat.

1. You could use two eighth notes
2. Or use an eigth note and two sixteenths
3. Or two sixteenths or an eighth
4. Or Sixteenth, Eighth, Sixteenth
5. There's the Dotted eighth, sixteenth
6. Also there's the Sixteenth Dotted Eighth
7. Then there's 4 sixteenth notes
8. Last, there's the simple quarter note

From there it's a simple matter of mixing and matching these 8 patterns together. Let's try it!
For the first pattern let's try mixing patterns 8, 2, 1, then 2. Here's how it would turn out:

 

Here's another example, using patterns 8,2,3,8:

To add a little interest you can add a tie in. A tie is simply two notes held out for the total of the two notes. When you play a tie, you will just skip the strokes of the 2nd of the two tied notes.
So you could try patterns 1,2,3,6 with a tie between parts 2 and 3. It would turn out like this:

Now let's put parts 2,3,1 and 2. This time we'll use two ties, one between 2 and 3 and another between 3 and 1.
The final result will be this:

 

That's really all there is to making your own pattern. If you get very comfortable with the 8 building blocks, then
it's very easy to make your own strum patterns. It's smart to use the same pick strokes each time you use the
different little blocks, because it will make things easier when you put them all together. Have fun making your
own rhythms!