The most awkward question I get asked is, “What’s the strumming pattern for this?” Because there’s no real answer to it. It’s not like a chord progression where there’s a right chord and a wrong chord. You can use different strumming patterns and it will still work. It’s an important skill to be able to pick your own strumming patterns.

So in this post I’ve listed some of the most common strumming patterns around. Ones you can try out and see if they fit the song.

For more info on strumming, read the posts on strumming notation and strumming for dummies; and the ebook I wrote How to Play Ukulele Strums.

Some Basics

Before you start strumming, go through these steps:

Step 1: Clap along with the song: If the singer was to shout, “Hey everybody, clap along,” what would you do? (Assuming you’re less surly than me and would just fold your arms and look moody.)

Step 2: Pretend you’re in The Ramones: If you were going to start the song by shouting one, two, three, four what would you do? Try counting through the song repeating that all the way (if counting to four doesn’t fit, try counting to three).

Step 3: Try a few strumming patterns: Try fitting a strumming pattern to the song. Fit them so the down strums in the pattern match with the numbers you count. So a dead simple pattern would be all down strums: strum down when you count one, when you count two, when you count three and when you count four.

4/4 Strumming Patterns

By far the most common time signature around is 4/4 (“four four”). If you can count along to a song, “one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,” and it fits, try out these strumming patterns.

Strumming Pattern 1: d – d u – u d –

This one crops up in so many ukulele songs. It’s simple to play. But – because it misses the third down strum – it has a slightly syncopated feel to it which makes it more interesting.

Sounds like:

d-du-ud-

Use it in:

Charlieissocoollike – A Song About Acne
She and Him – Gonna Get Along Without You Now
WIUO/Outkast – Hey Ya!
Kate Micucci & William H Macy – It’s Time to Get Laid
Noah and the Whale – Jealous Kind of Love
Zee Avi – Kantoi
Zee Avi – Just You and Me
In double time: Cosmo Jarvis – She’s Got You
Nevershoutnever – Cheatercheaterbestfriendeater
Andrews Sisters/Sophie Madeleine – Bei Mir Bist du Schon

Strumming Pattern 2: d – d u – u d u

Very similar to strumming pattern 1, but with another up strum at the end.

Sounds like:

d-du-udu

Use it in:

Ingrid Michaelson – You and I
Paolo Nutini – High Hopes
I Wanna Be Like You
Misty Miller – Remember
Paramore – Interlude: Moving On
Brendan Maclean – Stupid
Keston Cobblers’ Club – Pett Level
Amanda Palmer – Ukulele Anthem
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire

Strumming Pattern 3: d – d – d u d u

Sounds like:

d-d-dudu

Use it in:

WIUO – I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
Keston Cobblers Club – You Go
The Pogues – Fiesta
Neutral Uke Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers
Ewan Wardrop/50 Cent – In Da Club
Daniel Johnston – Living Life

Strumming Pattern 4: d – d u d u d u

A really straight-forward strum useful for punky stuff.

Sounds like:

d-dududu

Use it in:

UOGB – Teenage Kicks
Ryan Gosling – You Always Hurt the Ones You Love
The Beach Boys – Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Sufjan Stevens – Christmases Past
The Smiths – The Queen is Dead
Train – Sing Together
The Vaccines – Wrecking Bar

Half-Bar Patterns

If you’re looking for a strumming pattern for a song where the chords change regularly (twice a bar) try out these.

Strumming Pattern 5: d – d u

Sounds like:

d-du

Use it in:

Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Follow You Into the Dark
WIUO – Short People
Sesame Street
McFly – Love is Easy
Zooey Deschanel – You Forgot about Valentine’s Day
Zooey Deschanel – What are You Doing New Year’s Eve
GOTYE – Somebody That I Used to Know

Strumming Pattern 6: d u x u

Sounds like:

duxu

Use it in:

Hellogoodbye – Betrayed by Bones
Allo Darlin – Tallulah

Two Bar Pattern

If the chords change much more slowly, you could just double up on the 4/4 pattern. Or you could make it more interesting by using a two bar pattern.

Strumming Pattern 7:
d – d u – u d u
– u d u – u d –

Henceforth to be known as the ‘Sophie Madeleine strum’.

Sounds like:

d-du-udu-udu-ud-

Use it in:

Sophie Madeleine – The Knitting Song
Sophie Madeleine – You Are My Favourite
Sophie Madeleine – I Just Can’t Stop Myself
Rocky and Balls – Love Cake
Bella Hemming – Play Guitar
Peggy Sue – February Snow
Antarctica Takes It – C&F

Emphasis

Strumming Pattern 8: d u D U d u D U

Sounds like:

duDUduDU

Use it in:

Florence and the Machine – Kiss With a Fist
Rocky Horror Picture Show – Time Warp
Sophie Madeleine – Take Your Love With Me
Sufjan Stevens – Lumberjack Christmas
Chuck Berry – Run Run Rudolph

Strumming Pattern 9: d u x u d u x u

Sounds like:

duxudu

Use it in:

Nevershoutnever – Biggest Fan
Noah and the Whale – Five Years Time

Reggae Strums

With a reggae strum you’re always going to be accenting the off beats. In the other strums here you’re always playing a strong beat on the ‘one’ of the count. Here you’re accenting other beats. It’s not always obvious what’s going on so I’ve included a click track with these.

Strumming Pattern 10: – d – d – d – d

Here you’re accenting the beats between the count.

Sounds like:

-d-d-d-d

Use it in:

April Smith – Colors
Weezer/Sarah Blackwood – Say It Ain’t So

Strumming Pattern 11: – – d u – – d –

Here the accent is on the ‘two’ and ‘four’ beats.

Sounds like:

–du–d-

Use it in:

WIUO – The Israelites

3/4 Time

If counting, “one, two, three, four,” doesn’t fit with the song you’re playing, try counting in threes instead. If that works, try these patterns.

Strumming Pattern 12: d – d u d –

Sounds like:

d-dud-

Use it in:

Amanda Palmer – In My Mind
John Denver/Ballard C Boyd – Christmas for Cowboys
Weezer – Christmas Song
OK Go – Needing/Getting

Strumming Pattern 13: d – d u d u

Sounds like:

d-dudu

Use it in:

WIUO – Blue Smoke
Kelli Rae Powell – Some Bridges are Good to Burn
Walk off the Earth – Little Boxes
Bon Iver/Kina Grannis – Michicant

Changing the Patterns

There are tweaks you can make to all these strumming patterns.

Swing Them

When you swing a strumming pattern you make the down strum last slightly longer than the up strum. That gives the strum an off-kilter feel to it.

You can do this with any of the strums. For example, strum pattern 4 would sound like this when swung.

Swing Strum

Change the Tempo

You make any of these strums faster or slower than I’ve played them. In general, the more complicated the strum, the better it’ll sound slowed down. The more straight forward it is, the better it works at high speed.

For More on Strumming…

Pick up a copy of my ebook How to Play Ukulele Strums

When I say ‘essential’, I’m not just talking about records that are nice to listen to. All these records have changed the way I think about making music on the ukulele. They’ve inspired me to try something new, to be more ambitious in my playing or to think about the instrument in a new way.

This is my personal choice. So, if you think I’m an idiot, let me know what I’ve left out (or shouldn’t have included) in the comments and why it deserves to be here.

In no particular order:

James Hill – A Flying Leap

He’s got more tasteful and understated with his recent albums but I love this one for its spirit of , “Hey, Mum, look how high I can swing.” There’s an unrelenting enthusiasm to the entire album. Tunes like Uke Talk and Down Rideau Canal blast along like he’s desperate to play every note on the uke in as short a time as possible. He’s got total command of his ukulele and he’s enjoying every second of it.

With highly skilled players of any instrument there’s a tendency to sacrifice enjoyable tunes for technical wizardry but A Flying Leap doesn’t fall into that trap. Even a quite pretentious idea like the One Small Suite for ‘Ukulele is packed with hummable tunes.

James hasn’t made any secret of the fact he’s a bit jaded with the ukulele at the moment and, really, where do you go after an album like this?

Standout Track: Down Rideau Canal
Buy It: On Amazon
Play: Uke Talk, Skipping Stone and Song for Cheri on Dominator
Read: James Hill interview

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Live in London #1 and #2

If you tour for 25 years, you tend to become a pretty good live act. And there’s no doubt that the UOGB are best experienced live (they’re currently up there with Dillinger Escape Plan and AC/DC as my favourite gigs). These two albums pack in all the hits (with the merciful exception of Smells Like Teen Spirit) along with the atmosphere and jokes as old as the band.

As a nerd, what fascinates me about these records are the arrangements. Most uke groups just have most people strumming the same chord while a couple of flash-Harry’s have at it. But their arrangements are crafted.

Standout Track: Just one? Hot Tamales
Buy It: On their website.
Play: Shaft, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Anarchy in the UK, They’re Red Hot.
Read: Will Grove White interview

tUnE-YaRdS – BiRd-BrAiNs

If someone had asked me a few years ago what I’d most like to hear I’d probably have said, “MIA covering Frank Zappa on a ukulele,” and I would be imagining something a lot like tuNE-yArdDS. Connecting TUne-YArds to those to is the masses of ideas they cram in each track and their ability to combine sometimes wildly avant-guard sounds to make something enjoyable, listenable and popular.

Standout Track: Hatari
Buy It: On Amazon
Play: Hatari
Read: UkeToob’s interview with Tune-Yards.

Miss Jess – Jammin’ at Jackson’s

The Luddite part of me thinks every album should be made this way. Write some great songs, get together a bunch of great musicians, sit them around a single mic and give them a day to produce something incredible. Miss Jess followed that tactic and it paid off spectacularly with this record.

Standout Track: Philadelphia
Buy It: On Amazon
Read: Miss Jess interview

The Bobby McGee’s – S’Amuser Com Des Fous

I liked this EP so much I bought it on vinyl despite not having a record player.

Standout Track: When Father Died Ferrets Licked Away the Tears (aka Forever and a Day).
Buy it: On iTunes
Play: Forever and a Day
Read: Bobby McGee’s interview

Jake Shimabukuro – Gently Weeps

Jake Shimabukuro is idolised by many ukers for his individuality and originality. Which is why they try to play like him.

After the effects- and instrument- heavy Dragon, Gently Weeps is much more open and direct. Other instruments don’t get a look in until towards the end (where they make the sound much more cheesy). The album is the perfect showcase for Jake’s ability and contains some captivating performances.

Jake has such an individual and recognisable style it’s a shame that he inspires more people to imitate him than he inspires to find their own style.

Standout track: No one agrees with me on this but my favourite is Grandma’s Groove.
Buy It: On Amazon

Beirut – Gulag Orkestar

“Yeah, I’m in a band. I play guitar. And Billy’s on drums. And Mike on bass.” Oh, piss off.

With all the incredible instruments in the world it baffles me why 95% of bands just stick with the obvious. By the simple expedient of using brass, ukuleles and accordions, Zach Condon makes music far more interesting and captivating than most of his contemporaries.

Standout Track: Elephant Gun.
Buy it: On Amazon
Play: Beirut tabs and chords

Sophie Madeleine – Life, Love, Ukulele

It’s tricky writing songs that are timeless without being retro. It helps to be an impossibly talented songwriter. And that voice. Being something of a white-trash thug myself, I can’t resist the posh voice.

Standout Track: Take Your Love With Me
Buy It: On Bandcamp
Play: I Just Can’t Stop Myself (Writing Love Songs About You), Take Your Love With Me (The Ukulele Song) (Chords), The Knitting Song, You Are My Favourite
Read: Sophie Madeleine interview.

The improver section will have set you up with some serious chops. Now it’s time to start digging into tab and really showing off.

Step 1: Learn to Read Tab

– Frets and Strings
– Rhythm
– First ukulele tabs. A few short and simple but highly effective bits of tab:

WIUO – It’s A Heartache Introduction
Postcards from Italy Introduction
Kings of Leon/WIUO – The Bucket
Black Sabbath – Iron Man

Extra Credit: Follow the fingerpickinng lessons.

Step 2: Useful Licks

Hawaiian turnaround
Outros
Essential snippets to amuse your friends.

Extra Credit: Play a bunch of blues licks, riffs and solos in the How to Play Blues Ukulele ebook.

Step 3: Thumb-Only Tunes

Tabs for tunes that combine melody and chords but can all be played with just your thumb on the picking hand. So you can concentrate on the fretting hand without having to worry about complicated picking.

Patsy Cline/Willie Nelson – Crazy
Pua Lililehua
Waltzing Matilda
Christmas Time is Here
Whiskey in the Jar

Extra Credit: Get more tab arrangements for more popular instrumentals in the ebooks How to Play Christmas Ukulele, Christmas Ukulele 2 and

Step 4: Theory

– Learn some scales:

Minor scales
Major scale
Minor pentatonic scale
Blues scale

– How I work out chords
– Playing slash chords on the ukulele

Extra Credit: Harmonizing a melody

Step 5: Get a Solid Ukulele

Once you’ve reaching this stage in your ukulele playing, you’ll have put in many hours of practice. Before you get much further it’s time to get yourself a really nice, solid-top ukulele. Ohana and Kala both have solid ukuleles at affordable prices. If you budget stretches a bit further, take a look at KoAloha and Pono.

Now head to the advanced section and prepare to blow people’s mind with your mad-skills.

If you think there’s a post that deserves a link here or have a topic you’d like me to cover in this section, leave a comment.

You’ve just got your hands on a ukulele (or are just thinking of buying one). Here are a few things to read and songs to play that’ll get you up to speed quickly.

Step One: Learn the basics

– So You’ve Just Got Your First Ukulele – a free PDF I put together for beginners including essential links, first chords, tips and links to suggestions for the first songs to learn.
– 10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Ukuleles (Before I Bought One) – Don’t make the same mistakes I did.
– 10 Tips for Ukulele Beginners
– How to read chord charts.

Extra Credit: Ukulele for Dummies – The (paper) book I wrote covering all the ukulele basics from buying your first uke, to strumming, chord shapes and far beyond.

Step 2: Get Your Strum On

– Ukulele Strumming for Dummies
– Strumming notation
– 13 Most Useful Strumming Patterns

Extra Credit: – How to Play Ukulele Strums – An ebook I wrote covering all the strumming and rhythm essentials for beginners.

Step 3: Play Some Songs

Check out the Songs with Chords You Know Post

Some popular ones:

– Somewhere Over the Rainbow
– I Wanna Be Like You
– Hallelujah
– 5 Years Time
– Sentimental Heart

Extra Credit: Joan Jett – Bad Reputation – Easy chords but you’ll need to have your chord changes down and a strong strumming-hand to play it up to speed.

Step 4: Spend Some Money

– A ukulele tuner
– Some good strings like Aquila.

Extra Credit: Keep your ukulele upright with a stand. Get a capo to make playing in other keys easier.

Congratulations! You’re no longer a noob. You can now advance to the improver section.

If you think there’s a post that deserves a link here or have a topic you’d like me to cover in this section, leave a comment.

I do sometimes have it brought home to me that not everyone hangs on every single word I say. Hard to believe, I know. So here are a few things that are popular, good or over-looked that might have slipped by you.

The Most Popular Tabs and Chords

Well, it’s all fairly obvious stuff. Exactly what you’d expect.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Beirut
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Wait! What? Yes, Daft Punk is the fourth most visited tab/chord post on the blog. No, I don’t know why.

My Favourite Tabs and Chords

James Bond Theme – I think it’s the best arrangement I’ve done. Other people tend to think it’s…
Baby Elephant Walk – I like this one but it needs some work.
Sophie Madeleine – Take Your Love With Me – Just a brilliant chord progression.
Davy Graham – Angi
Naked As We Came – yeah, it was only yesterday. But I like it.

I Should Have Just Stayed in Bed

I toiled for hours. Deep into the night I sat playing. Sweat dripping from my brow. Blood dripping from my fingers.

Bollocks to you James Earl Jones. Sometimes you build it and no-one comes.

Carl Ray Villaverde’s version of Tears in Heaven
Chopin’s Funeral March
Mara Carlyle’s Baby Bloodheart

The How to Play Ukulele eBooks

I’m reliably informed by proper internet marketing people that I should sell my ukulele ebooks a lot harder than I do. Because most people visiting Uke Hunt would have no idea they existed – I’m sure quite a few regulars might not know – and those that do know they exist might not know that I’m the one who wrote them.

I don’t want to go all hard sell on them, but I will make them a bit more obvious. Because I think they’re really good and I’m proud of them.

The Interviews

Most viewed:

Rod Thomas – this one has been viewed over 10,000 times. I couldn’t be happier to give him any exposure I can – he’s the nicest guy in the world. And I have a man-crush on him.
Kate Micucci – is also very sweet. But I don’t fancy her as much as I do Rod.

My faves:

Gus from GUGUG
Dean ‘Minor Constellations’ Engle and Madeline Ava – Both insanely talented young lyricists. Dean has released a new album which you can download free on Rack & Ruin Records (click the album cover). Madeline’s stuff has disappeared from the interwebs along with CLLCT (*sobs*). After reading about her on here, Dean asked Madeline to marry him. I’m still hoping it’s going to happen – it’d make me the happiest blog-pimp in the world.

Useful Stuff

Slash chords – People are always asking, “how do you play B/C on a ukulele?” or some such. I think part of the problem is that people don’t know what to Google when they have that problem. So if you don’t know what a slash chord is, read the post now.
Blues scale and Pentatonic scale – essential if you ever want to do any improvising and solo shenanigans.
10 Reasons You Need to Buy a New Ukuele – psychologists say that people buy based on emotion then search for logical reasons to justify it. That’s certainly true of a lot of uke purchases.

Some Things Just Don’t Catch On

Me (in August 2007): Hey, here’s an idea. Why don’t I do a post with photos of me making stupid faces? And I’ll have a little test-what-you’ve-learnt bit at the end. Wow, everyone’s going to be really engaged with this post. I should do this all the time.

The Internet: Zero comments.

Keep up ukulele players’ well deserved reputation for kindness and generosity and sponser me for my part in the London Uke Fest’s record attempt. A big thanks to Jeff, Josh, Art and Chris(who was incredibly generous) for opening the pot.

My Fingerpicking Ukulele mini-course is looking a bit tired and will be taken down next Friday. So if you’re interested, get in fast. It might be resurrected at some point in the future – possibly as part of an ebook.

Fantastic Moustaches of the World ukulele: Front, Back.

Play along live with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Albert Hall as part of the Proms. If you can’t wait until then to catch them, you can hear Hester on Radio 4’s The Afternoon Play on Monday and Peter on the album A Psychedelic Guide To Monsterism Island (The POP! Stereo has a track from it available for download).

A story about the rise of the ukulele in Singapore thanks to the efforts of Ukulele Movement.

Another Martin cropped up on Antiques Roadshow. Much more interesting than the last. It’s a one-off spruce top. If you can buy it for the appraised $4,000 bite his arm off – he is underestimating Martin collector’s craziness. (via Ukulelia)

Boy Meets World ukulele: Part 1, Part 2.

MP3s: Craig Robertson covers Ukulelezo. Fong Songs has two MP3s from Ukulele Force including James Hill’s version of Cantina Band. Out the Other has a couple of JuNu tracks.

Exceptionally easy ukulele quiz. I got 100%, bitches. Although it’s not entirely to be trusted: “That’s right. The next largest is the concert, the baritone and then the tenor.”

The Beatles Fest is going after the same mass-ukulele record as the London Uke Fest. They tried the same thing last year and managed 28.

Vertigo Smyth chords on Uker Tabs.

Bette Midler gives the Obama girls a ukulele.

Supermodel Pania Rose plays naked ukulele. Not particularly well, but it would have been remiss of me not to mention it. And she lists her favourite band as Beirut. Keep her away from me. She’d fall in love and it would be one big hassle.

And a whole bunch of naked ukulele models here.

Kate Micucci is playing her ukulele on Scrubs – which is my new favourite ukulele news ever. She discusses her role as Ted’s ukulele sweetheart, Stephanie, here. Until you get a chance to watch it, you’ll have to content yourself Kate and Ted duetting on Screw You a PG version of Fuck You.

Tiki King has a some photos from NAMM including some new Fluke designs, some Les Paul-y type electric ukes from Stagg (with a strange choice of knob placement) and Ohana getting into the ‘oddly placed soundhole’ game.

The new Beirut double EP March of the Zapotech doesn’t have a great deal of ukulele on it (Quiet Color have an MP3 of the uke-heaviest track The Akala). Perhaps because Zach’s had his ukulele stolen.

New York Ukulele Festival is back on again under new management.

The Hull Ukulele Group starts up on 9th February. If you live in the area, sign up for their Facebook group.

More King Blues chords from sam_not_static on Uker Tabs.

Milk Milk Lemonade has an MP3 from The Half Sisters.

Is it ‘ukulele’? Is it ‘ukelele’? There’s only one way to sort this out. FIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

Do you think playing the ukulele is gay? If anyone asks, tell them your ukulele belongs to your secret girlfriend.

GUGUG/Gary Numan – Are Friends Electric? (Chords)(PDF)

I think I’ll have to do a Beirut on GUGUG at some point and write up all the songs they’ve done. All their songs are fun and easy to play and would work great as ukulele club songs.

I worked out the GUGUG version of Are Friends Electric? from their Are Friends Acoustic? version. But the uke parts for the two are pretty much identical.

Strumming Pattern

For the verses: you can go down, down, down on the C chord (with the last down being very short) and up, up, up, down, up, down on the Gm.

Without the chords and played slowly, it sounds like this:

MP3

With the chords, like this:

MP3

For the ‘uh-uh’ section: the easiest thing to do is two down strums like Fin does.

For the spoken word section: down, down, down, up, down, up should see you through.

I’ve been bashing away at this blog for 11 months now. In that time I’ve amassed around 350 posts. That’s way too many for people to sift through, so here’s a quick list of my most popular posts (and after that some posts for people who are new to the uke as well as to the site). For long term readers, I’d love to hear what you think people should read when they first pitch up here so I can add it to the list.

Posts for First Timer Visitors

About page

Get up to speed on the blog. I’m completely OCD on posting the same thing on each day of the week. The about page will let you know what to expect when.

Tab & Chords pages.

This is what most people come here for. The chords start on this page and the tabs start on this page. Whatever your tastes, you’ll probably find something that takes your fancy.

Perennial favourites include Beirut (whose entire back catalogue I’ve put up), While My Guitar Gently Weeps (my entirely ineffectual plea for people to come up with their own version rather than parroting Jake Shimabukuro), and Sweetafton23’s cover of Britney Spears’s Toxic (YouTube classic). More recent hits include Yael Naim’s New Soul, Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and Antsy Pants’s Vampire (from the Juno soundtrack).

If you’re desperate for more, check out the Rag Bag for some works in progress (sometimes glacially slow progress).

Guitar Riffs for Ukulele

Rock out with the world’s greatest guitar riffs arranged for ukulele.

Once you’ve gorged yourself on the archives, you can be sure of getting new stuff by putting your email in the doo-hickey at the top right, subscribing to the RSS feed by clicking here, or getting the latest posts on my Twitter feed.

Posts for Beginners

There’s plenty of stuff on the blog that should be helpful to the noobiest of ukulele noobs.

There’s a whole section of ukulele songs suitable for beginners. These songs usually contain just a few of the basic chords. To go along with that, the Ukulele 101 category covers the sort of uke knowledge that beginners should find helpful.

If you haven’t even got your hands on your own uke yet, you might want to check out this post about buying your first ukulele. It has a Christmas emphasis, but it still applies.

One post to check out is Ten Tips for Ukulele Beginners and if you want more tips, try my Ukulele 101 ebook.

If you’ve yet to learn, there’s a post here on how to read ukulele chord charts. A lot of the pieces on the blog are written in ukulele tablature. There’s a guide on how to read ukulele tab here.

Anything that I’ve missed?

Every once in a while, I get the overwhelming urge to write about non-uke playing acts and today I’ve given in. So, if you’re strictly a uke-only type, turn back now.

If, on the other hand, you love independent music and get a buzz from hearing people make music from their heart, opening handmade album covers and songs that haven’t been used to sell mobile phones, then hit ‘more’ and read about my favourite four acts that you’ve (probably) never heard of: Mary Epworth, The Hellbusters, Peggy Sue & the Pirates, and The Smoke Fairies. Read the rest of this entry »