How To Strum Songs in 12/8 Time Signature
This is a time signature you have heard before: 50’s ballads.
12/8 really feels like 4/4, but it has a tertial subdivision of every beat.
A 12/8 measure feels more like:
ONE two three
four five six
SEVEN eight nine
ten eleven twelve
… than it feels like “ONE two THREE four”
Other notable song examples in 12/8 are “House of The Rising Sun”
Or Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey”
Here’s a cool 6/8 strum rhythm
It’s interesting because it involves two different speeds in the strumming arm.
Down down up down
Down up down
In the first 4 strums, the strumming arm moves faster, in the last 3 strums, it moves more slowly.
It looks like this:
For 12/8, you’d just play that pattern twice in a row.
This will all make more sense in the following video.
Conclusion
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