EXAMPLE1 JOHNNY CASH/LUTHER PERKINS

CD TRACK 5

To kick things off let’s look at the strumming style of country legend Johnny Cash. Cash began his career in the mid 1950s backed by The Memphis Three. The instrumentation for this outfit was drums, double bass, with Luther Perkins on electric guitar and Cash on acoustic and vocals. Our jam track is based on the recordings Cash made in the late ‘50s and uses a similar template to several of his hit songs. Country guitar players often spice up their rhythm work by adding a bass line to their chord strumming. A standard move is to play the root note on beat one of the bar and the 5th on beat three. If you fill in the gaps with a chord strum on beats two and four this will give you a basic country style part. It sounds easy but getting the feel right can be tricky.

[Bar 1-end] The strumming-hand technique is simply a down pick for the bass notes and a down strum for the chords. This use of exclusive down picking provides a positive and even attack. The chord strums will sound naturally louder, too, which provides some movement to the groove.