Guitar: Campfire strumming pattern: An Open Learning Guide

With the “Western strumming” we had a good preliminary exercise for the “campfire strumming”, because the first half of the “Western strumming” is the same as the first half of the “campfire strumming”:

The second half of the campfire strumming takes a little getting used to. The "3" is not played! Instead, an air stroke is played (as if you were deliberately missing the 3). This means that two "ands" or two upbeats follow one another:

It is absolutely important that the upstrokes and downstrokes of the hand are executed evenly, because experience shows that two consecutive upstrokes tempt you to execute these two strokes too quickly.

This leads to an improper rhythm and a wrong beat. This mistake should be avoided at all costs. Inaccurately played chords, poorly executed downstrokes, even wrong chords, you can tolerate all of this at first and even overlook it, because it all goes away with enough practice. But if a beat is not right, i.e. if it is a little shorter or longer than it should be, then you will throw everyone singing along out of time.

The best way to counteract the unwanted "beat shortening" is to make your arm movements quite wide. It helps to raise and lower your hand at least as far as the guitar is wide when you strike. If you manage to perform this somewhat exaggeratedly wide movement fairly evenly, you will get the right rhythm pretty quickly. As soon as the rhythm is right, you can make more subtle beat movements again.

It is worth practicing the second half of the campfire beat in isolation for a while first. The first half of the stroke has already been practiced with the Western stroke.

Use your foot to help you and tap the beat. The striking hand and the foot move in parallel. Just imagine that your hand is connected to your foot with a thread (like a marionette). Each tap is a number and every time you lift your foot you get an “and”. The arm hits down parallel to each tap, and every time you lift your foot the arm also goes up. The rhythm is created by the strings sometimes being touched and sometimes not being touched during the up and down strokes. Even the head can easily follow this movement.

If you accompany a group with the guitar, the striking arm can sometimes replace a conductor’s baton. Therefore, you don't need to be afraid if you make the movements a little too clearly at first. Just imagine that you are conducting a choir with your percussion hand at the same time.

The 4/4 beat is a very simple beat that is reminiscent of a simple marching tempo. The western strumming pattern can almost always be used where the 4/4 beat or the campfire beat is also suitable. It is very reminiscent of country and western songs (hence the nickname). If you have songs in which chords are changed often and quickly one after the other, beginners have a little less trouble changing the chord in the middle of the bar than with the campfire strumming pattern. You change at the "1" and at the "3".

Now, to practice, you have to practice the songs with the beats suggested here. Later, your own taste will decide which strumming pattern you prefer. At the moment you only know four strumming patterns, but that will change sooner or later.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Guitar/Campfire strumming pattern by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.