[JonPR]

Originally Posted by GuitarFundi

I think I can learn more from learning how a talented player uses his right hand than I (very untalented) can learn from making it up as I go, but I appreciate what you are saying.

I think I am a fish out of water asking a bunch of birds how to fly and they just keep telling me to flap my wings (flippers) and it will happen. I think many of you have a skill set that you do not realize is not shared by all of us mere wannabees

Good point. As a teacher, I grapple with this all the time. Things I take for granted (forgot I learned) I have to dredge up from my subconscious and dismantle in order to teach them.

One thing I would say about strumming patterns is that in most songs they don't matter. In some songs, the strum rhythm is a distinctive and important part of the song (eg , Smells Like Teen Spirit, Wonderwall), but in most the player just strums the chords any way he feels like it. The dudu pattern is arbitrary.

The main thing about strumming is to always move your hand down on the beat. As you count 1-2-3-4, your hand should be moving down on every beat. Sometimes at slow tempos you can have downstrokes between the beats too. IOW, if it's slow enough for you to be able to comfortably play another downstroke between the beats, you probably should.
Now, these downstrokes don't always hit the strings. Sometimes they miss. Like you don't always put an upstroke between every downstroke.
Obviously, between each downstroke, your hand has to move up to get to the next downstroke! Upstrokes are no more mysterious than that (do you let the pick touch the strings on the way back up, or not?).

If I can put it in dudu terms, in an average 4/4 bar at medium tempo, your hand is moving like this:

1 2 3 4
dudududu

- it just doesn't hit the strings on every pass. (It's usually up to you which strokes you feel like connecting with the strings.)

At slow tempos, your hand is moving like this:

1 & 2 & 3 & 4
DuduDuduDuduDudu

This is where 16th-note patterns come from.
The capital Ds just mean that those are the most vigorous or wide-ranging moves; the ones marking the beat count. Again, you don't hit the strings on every pass. In fact, in this type of rhythm, you probably miss more strokes than you hit.

I don't know if this all seems like common sense to you (as it does to me ), but I know many beginners struggle, thinking they need to change the direction of their hand, and developing a jerky movement ending up playing some upstrokes on the beat. Watch pro players and their hands never falter from the regular DUDU movement; it's a constant, relaxed swinging movement, regardless of how fancy the strum pattern is.
Of course (as I guess you might say) it can be hard to tell when they're actually hitting the strings and when they're not! In that case - it doesn't matter! If the strum pattern matters, you will clearly hear when the strokes hit and when they miss.

Even so, where there is a clear and distinctive strumming rhythm (special to that song, rather than a generic one that many songs might have), it can - I agree - be hard to work out where the strokes hit, the exact combination of beats and off-beats. To help you there, I recommend some slowdown software. I use Transcribe all the time, best there is, IMO:
http://www.seventhstring.com/
If you think your ear is not good enough (and most of us feel like that at least some of the time ), that kind of thing is essential. It doesn't tell you answers (not totally reliably anyway), it just helps you listen.

Originally Posted by GuitarFundi

I was robbed of music as a child and learned to not give it any notice and when the Music Fairy came one day and said here listen to what you have been missing it was life changing.

Sounds like my own experience..

Originally Posted by GuitarFundi

I am now obsessed with music and yet have little time for it and struggle greatly. Thank You!

The only thing I ever struggled with was hearing. My lack of a musical childhood left me with a very undeveloped musical ear. When I started (age 16), I'd use a 2-speed tape deck to help transcribe music. (There was no tab then; I could read music, but the music I wanted to learn wasn't available in songbooks.)
That effort was invaluable, and I strongly recommend you try doing it yourself, using whatever aural aids you can find.

Justin Sandercoe has some great tips on slow tempo techniques:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4jkbBAkc8
- notice that the first down-up pattern requires an uncomfortably slow arm movement. That's why we double up the downstrokes at tempos like that: it's more relaxing to move the arm quicker.