a method to decide which pattern to apply pop/rock songs

Hello beginners

I'm one of you! As most of you know, many have some troubles to choose the proper rhytmhic pattern to apply to a song. I've also had a lot of troubles too until I bought an excellent book from a French guitarist, Walter Laurent Boy. Unfortunately I suppose it is available only in French and in Italian but you could also check his site http://www.mega-muse.com . Anyway ‘til now I studied and made the excercises just for the first 30 pages or so but the most important thing is that he expose in his book a method to understand how to play a number, a method which really works so I think it should be interesting to give everyone some hints. First of all a premise: the book is just the first one in a series of three which will be printed in the next months so it is adressed to beginners. You would not find any arpeggios or embelisshments but just some basic patterns and in the second part of the book some basic scales to start improvising.

Anyway Laurent Boy's main point is that there are three basic patterns which could be used (of course with some variations) to play the biggest part of pop/country/rock/blues numbers (also some hard rock slow numbers etc.). The only thing you have to do to play a number is to decide which is the beat resolution and then you could find a pattern which apply the song. Here it is:

a) if the song is based on octave note resolution (which means no more than two notes per beat) you could play it with a folk pattern like the classic D/du/u/du or variation like D/du/u/d or du/du/u/du or whatever pattern you like (also all down up strums);
b) if the song is based on sixtheens note resolution (which means that at least in some beats there are four notes) you could play it with a pattern like bb/ddu/bb ddu or any variations of it (i.e you could substitute the first beat two octave bass notes with one single quarter downstrum);
c) if the song is based on blues the main feature is the shuffle rhythm which means that there is at least one beat where you have to play a note twice longer than the other (he suggest to delay the second note by ending the downstrum with a small circle under the string: it works!!). He suggest some patterns like B du B D where the second beat is the one with the shuffle or B/du/B/du with shuffle played on beat 2 and 4 or bu/du/bu/du with shuffle is played in every single beat

Note: I divided each beat with a slash

So his point is that if you choose the right resolution you could play the song properly, alongside the cd, even if you're not doing exactly the same notes of the original recording (of course in some cases there are several guitars mixed or some parts are played by piano so it is not easy to understand all rhythmic details of the song). The only trouble is to decide which is the song resolution but this could be solved if you pay attention to the beats. If you're able to tap with the foot the main beats of the song (I mean the 1,2,3,4 beats, something everyone can do), all you have to do is to notice if there are more than two notes per beat: if so, you could be sure that the pattern is based on sixtheen notes, otherwise you could use folk pattern (bluesy songs don't give troubles because you coud immediately recognize shuffle so, even if they are difficult to play properly, at least you know which pattern should use). He also adds that you could also play most numbers with folk strums even if the original is based on sixtheens resolution but of course the result is better if you use sixtheens.

Of course there are a lot of other rhythms peculiar of some kind of music and the method does not apply to metal/prog/punk/south american music but I think it is really helpful for a lot of song.

Anyway let me know what you think about it

Matteo