just because you buy sheet music, there is no guarantee that the songs will be anything like "official". With a lot of compilations it tends to be pretty much like here on the web...

I have a lot of "official" songbooks that are miles away from the real thing as well...

There is a three piece set of books here in Germany called "Das Ding" (The Thing). Together they offer about 4 inces of mostly well playable stuff (only few German titles in there) but they don't have patterns as well...

Cheers,

Tom

Hello everybody, My name is Joe and I am also new to this and having problems with understanding strum patterns. Many of the songs seems to have wrong chords, when played using the song pattern they sound awful, I've tried recording many of the songs using backing tracks and on playback, My reaction was 'what the heck'. Chordie gives you an idea and you just have to run with it and do a little experimentation.

Please bear in mind two things when looking at the chord charts.  First, they are not entered to Chordie, but found and more 'reflected' here from somewhere else.  Chordie is more of a song chart search engine than it is an original hosting location.  So, we're not going to get the authors of the chord charts to do anything as we often don't know who they are.  Second thing is that the chord charts are a representation of however the author of the chart plays the song - they are NOT necessarily the exact way the song was played by the original recording artist.  They are all ARRANGEMENTS on the song meant for personal study, and not official, sanctioned versions.  If you want to duplicate the original recording artist's version, I'm afraid that you're going to have to go buy sheet music for it.  I have several books from Alfred publishing of that sort.  "The Ultimate White Pages Acoustic Guitar Guitar Tab" and "Easy Guitar Tab White Pages".  Each has hundreds of songs and cost about $30. 

- Zurf

I just try to let my right hand find the pattern... sometimes a song has a notable characteristic that you absolutely have to include in your strumming (Viva la Vida or First we take Manhattan spring to mind) but mostly you can and should try to make the song your own. Same with the chords: for someone (usually the guy who wrote them down in the first place) these chords work ok. For someone else (usually me) they might not. So it's back to your own version of song and chords and pattern and maybe even lyrics...

Cheers,

Tom

Seriously, on the right side of the page, look for Songbook: ADD - click on ADD and that should do it.

Welcome to chordie, please use the search feature on top of the forum or start a new thread if your question has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Hijacking a thread is considered poor manners.

Anyhow... as for Chordie adding strum patterns to songs... it just doesn't work that way.  Chordie doesn't host any of the songs here.  Chordie is more of a search engine that indexes songs from other sites around the web and pulls the chordpro formatting to make it look all pretty for you and work with it by transposing etc.  Sooooo, if the original author that posted this somewhere else on the web includes a strum pattern, great, if not, there's nothing much chordie can do.  I have noticed that some songs have been commented on (scroll to the very bottom of the song) and people have included notes for strum patterns, or minor corrections here and there.  Not all of them of course, but some.

If you have a song that you're dying to get a strum pattern for... you could always post in the "song requests" section asking for that help with a link to a recording of the song (perhaps on youtube) for another member to listen to and give you their suggestion on a strum pattern.    We're all here learning together!!

i wanted to ask but didnt want to sound daft as i thought everyone else must know the strum patterns to use <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_redface.gif" border=0 alt="Embarassed">

i find the songs and can play the easier ones but they sound terrible because i havent got a clue what strum pattern i should use.i have been playing around with a guitar for about a month now so even if i know the song i still am not sure how i should be strumming so any help would be much appreciated <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_biggrin.gif" border=0 alt="Very Happy">