Some songs greet you at the door with a barre chord and a firm handshake that dislocates your index finger. "Bam Bam" is not one of them. Camila Cabello and Ed Sheeran wrote a hit that hides all its swagger in the right hand, which means your left hand gets to relax and take a little holiday.
This clip is the main strumming pattern of "Bam Bam" on guitar, built entirely from easy open-string chords — no barre chords, no crying. Slap a capo on the first fret and you'll be playing along with the original recording before the second chorus, singing "yeah, life is rough" while your fretting hand does almost nothing.
How the Bam Bam strumming pattern works
The magic here is rhythmic, not harmonic. The chords are plain, friendly open shapes — the kind you already know from every campfire — so all the character lives in the strum. The trick is a light, bouncing down-up motion where your picking hand keeps moving the whole time, even when it isn't hitting strings. Think of your arm as a metronome that never stops swinging: on some beats it grazes the strings, on others it just fans the air. That constant motion is what gives the pattern its relaxed, slightly Latin lean instead of a stiff on-off chop.
The one concrete takeaway: keep your strumming hand in continuous motion and let missed strums be silent, not stopped. If you want to build the muscle for that first, my breakdown of Strumming Patterns for Guitar drills exactly this, and if the chord shapes themselves feel shaky, the Guitar Chords primer has your back. Capo on fret 1 and you're in the original key.
And yes, "life is rough" — but this particular song is not, so if your right arm can wave goodbye to someone, you already have the technique. Grab the PDF and Guitar Pro file on my Patreon.