LEARN 16TH NOTES STRUMMING ON THE GUITAR

Hey everyone, This blog is a continuation of the blogs on art of strumming. In this post, we will be discussing about concept of 16th notes in music and the basic 16th notes strumming pattern. Let us go back a little to the post on "Rhythm essentials" where we had discussed the concept of beats and the rhythm notations used in music. We learnt in that lesson that Rhythms are studied using number of Beats and the speed of a song or any music piece is decided by its BPM (Beats Per Minute). Notations used for indicating Rhythm, have following Beat Values and corresponding rest symbols -

When we join four 16th notes in a single beat, it looks like this -

Four 16th notes in a beat

The counting of four 16th notes in a beat is done as (1 e + a). Below image depicts how counting of four 16th notes for four beats is done -

Counting of four 16th notes for four beats

Now let us look at the strumming of four 16th notes for four beats -

Till now, we have included four 16th notes in all four beats. But practically, it doesn't stand true. While strumming, we typically play combinations of 16th notes. Let us look at few combinations in the images below -

1st variation - The middle stroke goes away and replacing 1st two 16th notes with an 8th note

Now to understand the 2nd variation, we will introduce a concept of dotted notes. Till now, all the notes that we have learnt were in even numbers. When we introduce dotted notes, the beat value becomes 1.5 times.

Concept of dotted notes

Now let us look at our second variation, where we have applied a dot on the 8th note, making it 3/4 of a beat.

2nd variation - middle two strokes go away

Below are few 16th notes strumming patterns, where we have also used the concept of dotted notes -

Using 1st variation in 4th beat

Using 2nd variation in 2nd beat

There's a very famous Bollywood Song "Gulaabi aankhein" that is played using one of the 16th notes strumming pattern. To know how it sounds, do check out the video above -

To have a better understanding about the lesson, do play the video till the end. And, if you enjoyed watching the video, do not forget to Like, Comment & Subscribe to our official Youtube channel www.youtube.com/musicwithrahulsharma