Strumming Patterns is a free lesson series by Vicki Genfan previewing the material covered in her upcoming course, 30 Strumming Patterns You MUST Know. Check out Vicki’s other courses, and be sure to subscribe for more free lessons to come!
Here’s a very basic latin-jazz strum pattern laid over a funky-latin-sexy-hop drum loop. All of the major ‘strokes’ are DOWN, and there’s a nice bunch of ‘chicken scratch’ in between those accents which makes this strum flow. Pay special attention to beat ‘2’ in the second measure of the pattern…. There’s a very strong, accented ‘down stroke’ with muted strings (left hand). Again, when you nail this, the ‘groove’ factor escalates.
You could certainly use this pattern in a more traditional latin/jazz context and at faster or slower tempos. Play around and see what you find. I personally love to mix and match genres in strange ways. It’s one of the things I love about so much of today’s music!
I’m using a moveable minor 7 and dom9 chord starting in the 7th fret, then moving them down to the 5th fret. So my chords are: Bm7-E9/Am7-D9. Try using different chords and listen to the difference.