Understanding the DU patterns

[1neeto]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Judging from the above video, his main strum pattern is:

|1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . |
 d u d u d u d u d u d u d u d u 
 D       D     U   U D     U D

What's important is that his hand is moving all the time in the dudu pattern shown in lower case. He just hits the strings in the pattern shown in caps.
Of course, he varies it a little, occasionally hitting other strokes.

The hand must keep moving wheher you're hitting the strings or not. This is what a lot of beginners find hard when they encounter strum patterns, which is why they're not really a good idea to try and follow until you're comfortable keeping time with the constant dudu movement (regardless of which strokes hit the strings).
Keeping the "1-2-3-4" on downstrokes is crucial. At medium or fast tempos, any upstrokes will be on the "and"s beween the beats.
At slow tempos like this, if you have time to insert extra downstrokes between the beats, do it: so every 8th is a D and you have 16ths between on upstrokes. Lots of fancy patterns are available this way. Always keeping your arm moving the same way will help you stay in time - don't freeze the stroke!

Yep, it's also crucial that not every down and up strum you have to hit strings. No matter what, just keep that strumming arm going. Your strumming arm is your metronome, if strumming in 4/4, if you hit only down strums, then that's all 1/4 notes, and down-up on the same beat are eight notes. You'll get a feel for it the more you practice.

[Jusca]

I wanted to update on my progress that I got the strumming down thanks to the advice here. Thanks again yall.