6/8 Ballad — 6/8 Strumming Pattern
Sixteen strumming patterns, each on its own page: the arrow chart with counting, the tempo sweet spot, the genres it drives, and a one-tap hand-off into the play-along trainer preloaded with that pattern.
- All Downstrokes — 4/4, beginner
- Eighth-Note Down-Up — 4/4, beginner
- The Most Common Strum — 4/4, beginner
- Driving Downstroke Eighths — 4/4, intermediate
- Boom-Chick (Country) — 4/4, intermediate
- Backbeat Eighths — 4/4, intermediate
- Reggae Skank — 4/4, intermediate
- Ska Upstroke — 4/4, intermediate
- Slow Ballad — 4/4, intermediate
- Anthem Ballad — 4/4, intermediate
- Folk Alternating Feel — 4/4, beginner
- Waltz — 3/4, beginner
- Three-Beat Downstrokes — 3/4, beginner
- 6/8 Ballad — 6/8, intermediate
- 6/8 Rolling — 6/8, intermediate
- 16th-Note Funk — 4/4 (16ths), advanced
6/8 Ballad is an intermediate 6/8 strumming pattern: D · D D · U, counted 1 2 3 4 5 6. Your strumming hand never stops — it swings down and up through every slot, and the pattern comes from which passes actually touch the strings. That constant pendulum is what keeps the rhythm locked, so practice the motion before the notes.
The slow compound lilt of 6/8: two dotted pulses per bar with an up-strum lead-in on the last eighth — the rocking feel of many slow blues-ballads. It sits best between 50 and 90 BPM — start near 70 with a metronome, and only speed up once every strum lands clean. Heard most in ballad, folk.