BONUS: Bluegrass Strumming 104

The Bum-Ditty Pattern

The bum-ditty pattern combines your bass note, downstroke and upstroke to create the quintessential guitar rhythm pattern.

The bum-ditty pattern is named as such because when you say it, it sounds like the rhythm you're playing on the guitar. It's a great reference for learning because it's an easy term to remember. The 'bum' refers to the bass note, the 'dit' is your downstroke, and the 'ty' is an upstroke. For the upstroke you want to practice strumming through all six strings to internalize the hand motion, but you will eventually strum 3-4 strings and we'll talk about that in future lessons.

Hit the play button below to practice along with the tab.