Boogie is an easy 4/4 strumming pattern in eighth notes. Written in arrows it is B D B D, swung at 55%.
The player above plays it at 120 BPM over the chords E – A – B7 (blues in E). Press Start to hear it, or slow it down to see each stroke.
161 strumming patterns from beginner to funk and Bollywood, played with real chords, with slow motion and a moving strum hand.
Boogie is an easy 4/4 strumming pattern in eighth notes. Written in arrows it is B D B D, swung at 55%.
The player above plays it at 120 BPM over the chords E – A – B7 (blues in E). Press Start to hear it, or slow it down to see each stroke.
| Count | 1 | & | 2 | & | 3 | & | 4 | & |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strum | B | · | ↓ | · | b | · | ↓ | · |
| Hand | ↓ | ↑ | ↓ | ↑ | ↓ | ↑ | ↓ | ↑ |
Say the count out loud and strum only on the bold words: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
↓ down · ↑ up · ✕ chuck (muted) · B bass note · b second bass note · bold: accent · dashed: palm-muted · underlined: short. The last row is the strumming hand, which keeps moving even where nothing sounds.
B D B D uses four of the eight eighth-note slots in the bar: all of them down strokes, with the hand swinging past the strings four times. Every stroke lands on a beat, so it is as steady as rhythm gets. The bar ends with a silent swing on the “&” of 4, a free moment to move your fretting hand to the next chord.
Swing a boom-chick and it becomes a boogie: bass note on the beat, a short strum on the late off-beat. Try it over a twelve-bar blues in E or A.
On every “&” the hand moves without touching the strings. Keep it moving there, in the same down-up rhythm.
Lift the hand just clear of the strings between strokes. Keep that return small: at 120 BPM each eighth note lasts 250 ms.
On beat 1, pick only the chord’s root on its lowest string: the 6th string for G, the 5th for C, the 4th for D. On beat 3, pick another bass note of the same chord, a string or two higher.
At 55% swing every second eighth arrives late. At 120 BPM a straight eighth lasts 250 ms; swung, the on-beat one lasts about 341 ms and the off-beat one 159 ms.
At 120 BPM a bar lasts 2.00 seconds and you play 120 strokes a minute. Slow motion at ×0.5 brings that down to 60.
Blues lives on the triplet. A shuffle swings its eighth notes long-short, and slow blues spells out all three eighth notes of every beat in 12/8. Play them over the twelve-bar blues: four bars of the I chord, two of IV, two of I, then V, IV, I and V.
Change it in the pattern builder
Count “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” and play bass note on beat 1, down on beat 2, second bass note on beat 3 and down on beat 4.
120 BPM here, 120 strokes a minute. Learn it near 72 BPM; songs with this feel usually sit between 80 and 140 BPM.
Yes, once four downs and chord changes feel easy. The one moment to watch is the change from the down to the second bass note on beat 3; start it at ×0.5, 60 BPM.
The chord’s root on its lowest string (6th string for G, 5th for C and A, 4th for D), then another bass note of the same chord for the alternating bass.