Strumming Songs: Mr. Jones by The Counting Crows, The Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer and More Than A Feeling by Boston have 3 distinctive must know strumming patterns; each one completely different and deliberately picked to help you improve your muscle memory and strumming ability.
As with many of our sessions in this month’s issue, we will be stringing them all together, one after the other, to help you learn adjusting from one pattern to the other, adding your own colour and flavour and using them as warm up sessions which you will be able to commit to memory. It is actually surprising the amount of guitarists who, when asked to play something, look completely blank, even though they may know a plethora of songs.
The intro to Mr. Jones is the simplest of the strumming patterns, using open chords. The other two songs (Psycho Killer intro and More Than A Feeling chorus) not only use bar chords, but the patterns have more emphasis on some of the up and down strokes that will enable you to put your own mark on them. Learn the basics and then have a play around and add your own textures and colours. That way you will feel you have achieved even more than usual.
Mr Jones: Counting Crows
Psycho Killer: Talking Heads
More Than A Feeling: Boston
by Andy Partridge
