Table of contents

Comprehension

Chords and their changes

Three important symbols

Picking or strumming

The C chord

The bass strings

Down & Up

Tom Dooley

Different rhythm patterns

Knockin` on heaven’s door

Bass accompaniment

Now we add the beat

We continue to expand

One-mil-lion-Dol-lar-jack-pot - the master strum with bass

1 + 6

THTTTHT

Songlist for the THTTTHT

Jeeeez

List of songs for the Jeeeez

Whiskey in the jar

Extravagant

Waltz

Waltz, part 2

Wild Rover, a waltz at its best

Rock`n Roll with C&O

C&O

Different versions of the same pattern

Streets of Philadelphia

Rocking all over the world

Hammering

The night they drove old Dixie down - Intro with Hammering

Sweet Home Alabama

If I had a hammer

Every breath you take

Christmas carols

Picking pattern no. 1

The bass picking for the picking pattern no. 1

Sailing

Tears in heaven

Tears in heaven, part 2

Picking pattern no. 3

Different patterns and their bass pickings

Bass pickings part 2

Bass pickings part 3

Emphasizing individual strings

Rock - folk - country

Bass runs

Bass run, part 2

Bass run with C F G

How about one more

That’s it for now

Imprint

Hello, my name is Christian Pahlke

Every beginner as a guitar player sooner or later wonders. I can play chords, but what next? Here is the answer. What you are looking for and need now is the rhythm (strumming and picking patterns).

A song consists of three components: a melody, the chords, and the rhythm. You know the melody of your favorite songs, you can find the matching chords on the Internet, so all you’re really missing is the rhythm.

With this book I’d like to show you those rhythms with which I accompany a lot of songs from many musical styles. Here, you won’t read anything about notes, musical scales, 3/4 or 1/16 time, triplets, fifths, thirds, amplitude or similar things. I'm not going to make this a musicology lesson. I will show you the rhythms that I gathered in a way that you can play them straight away and thereby can accompany endless amounts of well-known songs. At the beginning, the rhythms are partially converted into a counting method so that really every not-so-absolute-beginner can improve. Easy figures allow you to see at a glance what is important. All the interesting things are immediately visible.

If you can change chords without a problem then this is the right book for you. But if you still have to learn how to play chords then unfortunately this is the wrong book for you. You can find a lot of books in music stores that deal with learning chords. There, you can also find a lot of music books with texts and the matching chords. Here, you can easily apply these rhythms. I wrote this book so that you can continue right after having learned chords.There are easy rhythms like “Every breath you take" and there are complicated ones like Creedence Clearwater’s "Proud Mary". There are gentle rhythms like Peter Sarstedt’s "Where do you go to, my lovely?" and there are quite hectic but nevertheless really simples ones like Trini Lopez`s "If I had a hammer". There are rhythms for "La Bamba", "Country roads", "This is the life", "Bed of roses", "Oh Donna", "Silvia’s mother", "At the hop", "Keep on rocking me", "Young girl", "Summer Wine", "Indian reservation", "Sailing", "Black is black", "Summer of 69", "Sweet home Alabama", "Wish you were here", "Angie", "In the year 2525", "Let it be", "Love hurts", "I am, I said", "Easy living", "The air that I breath", "I was made for lovin’ you", "Let`s twist again", "Hotel California" and so on and on...

Comprehension

You should try to learn to understand rhythms. They all have their own melodies. It would be very helpful for you to develop a sense for it. The more this develops, the more confidently you can later correlate a song with a rhythm. This is exactly what I want to show you with this book in the first place. You should practically be able to figure out which rhythm, strumming, or picking pattern matches best to the song. There aren’t too many different options you see. It’s just that usually you don’t know how to proceed. But if you read through this book and the articles that interest you and learn the material then actually you shouldn’t have a big problem with it anymore. Rhythm is a matter of pure feeling. You can’t just rush through a rhythm and the necessary pattern without feeling it. It’s the same with dancing. Rhythms are nothing less than harmoniously balanced, concatenated sequences. So a matter of pure feeling. I will show you some nice rhythms and you will soon understand what you have to do: simply play, nothing more. And I will give you many hints which songs you can accompany them with. You can practice with these. Unfortunately, I can’t give you too many useful texts with chords and my rhythms all together. Almost all, with a few exceptions, underlie the copyright law. But this shouldn’t keep you from learning the rhythms anyway. There are plenty of texts with chords on the Internet, and many books available as well. If you accompany them with my rhythms then you have teaching material without end.

First, start to play and practice for a while, and once you’ve found the one or the other rhythm that works well for you then you should start to sing along. Changing chords fluently and learning the rhythms will probably be enough in the beginning. Please don’t be surprised if I sometimes write about rhythms and other times about patterns. This refers to the same thing. By the way, often several different patterns fit to the same song, but not always.

Chords and their changes

Often people ask me when to change chords. Well, on the one hand the chords are usually written above the corresponding text passage which you can find on the Internet or in books. At that point where the new chord is written, that’s where the old chord has to be replaced, it’s that simple. But sometimes neither the text passage nor the chord is correct, unfortunately. Then you should look for different versions of the song. That sometimes happens to the author because of different formats and programs that he or she is working with. But on the other hand at some point you must develop a feeling for the best timing when to change chords. That just happens to be a real matter of feeling, just like a rhythm.

That is why you should always start with really easy songs if you still have problems with it, like for instance “Lady in black“, “The drunken sailor“, “Hymn“ and “Tom Dooley“, each with 2 chords. A really great song to practice changing chords is an old and popular tune.  It has many chord changes, that’ s how you learn it best. Each chord is strummed one or more times and you can hear inevitably that you have to change the chord. Practice it with single strums. For each chord symbol you strum down on the guitar with the thumb on your right hand.

Three important symbols

Now I will show you those symbols that will be important for you. There are only very few, we do want to keep everything as simple as possible. You need them to be able to play a rhythm with you right hand.

I have drawn a diagram for you below. It represents a section of the fingerboard of a guitar, namely the part of the strings just above the sound hole. This is nothing more than the view of the strings above the sound hole. Now this is not about frets anymore, like with the chords, but about the six strings as such. Here, the bass strings are again at the bottom and the treble strings on top.

A thick black dot in my figures always represents a picking of the bass.

The arrow pointing up means: you have to strum/stroke the marked strings on the guitar downwards (Down).

The arrow pointing down means: you have to strum/stroke the marked strings on the guitar upwards (Up).

All the figures that I will show you start from the left. So here, first the picking, then one Down and one Up. Later, the fingerpicking-labels will be added to the mere picking patterns. So far everything clear?
Here, below the text, you have a good example of a song that is strummed with only one Down. Of course you can accompany every song like this, each with a single very light down before you have to confidence to try the various patterns. This is simple but a good method to first develop a sense of rhythm. For each bold word, you make a strum downwards over the strings with your right thumb.

Picking or strumming

There are two different ways to play chords on the guitar: picking and strumming.

For this we can use our free hand (usually the right hand since most people are right handed) or a nice little tool called a plectrum (a plastic plate, also simply called a pick).
Picking is carried out with your thumb because the thumb of the right hand points downwards while playing, in fact only in this direction. Soon we will need the thumb, especially for picking the bass. The picking with the other fingers is performed from the bottom to the top. Fortunately, they are arranged on the hand in such a way that it hardly works differently.

You strum the strings either only with your loose thumb, the fingernails of your right hand or the plectrum. Each of these playing varieties has its advantages and disadvantages, or rather its distinct qualities.

With your thumb, you cannot create any loud sounds. Instead, you can play in a wonderful delicate way with it. With the fingernails of the right hand, you can already play much louder if required. Strumming downwards and upwards (upwards always with your thumbnail) as such is not a problem. However, if you’re strumming and also want to pick the bass in the same rhythm, then this already requires some practice and proper playing.

The plectrum is also something nice, it can make a lot of noise and covers a lot of technical inaccuracies. It is very easy to strum downwards and upwards with the plectrum. But if you play with the plectrum exclusively, then the fine motor skills of your right hand will not be trained. And that would be a shame. That is why I think the plectrum is only partially suitable for beginners.
But you should definitely learn how to handle it because it allows individual strings to be emphasized. And at a campfire it acts like an amplifier.

The "pick" itself is a tool for an instrument and this technique has to be learned properly at first. But if you try these techniques out every now and then, then in the long run they shouldn’t be a problem. Time and practice will make you improve. That's the beauty of making your own music, it never goes back, only forward. And one day, not too far away, you will master even these techniques and play like countless guitarists in the world, loose, free and happy.

The C chord

Here you have the only chord that is played in classical music in one way and for accompaniment in another way. When accompanying, the arrangement of the fingers changes, and is even extended by one finger. Here you see the classic version with three fingers. Index, middle an ring finger.

The way I play it exclusively is to take the pinkie along. Millions of guitar players in the world finger the C chord like this. You need the first two thick bass strings for some rhythms with an alternating bass.

Aside from that, the harmony of all 6 strings can now be heard.
For songs by Johnny Cash or for country music in general, this is (for me personally) an essential chord.
By the way, the C chord is the chord that I use in many examples unless indicated otherwise.
I also call it “my reference chord”. It has the most beautiful melodies of all chords.

The bass strings

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Your guitar has three bass strings, namely the thick E string, the A string and the D string. The three thin strings are called treble or melody strings. They have the notations g, h, e. Different rhythms depend on especially emphasizing the bass strings. For that you have to hit them precisely. When picking, this is achieved best with your thumb. This also works for strumming but it already requires some experience, and especially practice.

The arrow in the rhythm patterns tells you to hit these strings roughly with one stroke. Roughly means that it is not absolutely necessary to hit them all. Often you hit two, sometimes three or four strings, and it's fine. So in the