Like A Hurricane

Hi and a belated welcome to Guitar Noise.

Chorus rhythm 1 is spelled out, beat by beat, but for some reason it's tucked between Example 5 and Example 6. In fact, a lot of the later example seem to not match up with the text. I'll see if I can't get Paul to fix that.

If you can read notation rhythm, you don't have to think in terms of "up and down" and it will make your life a lot easier. First, see what type of notes are in the measure. Let's look at measure one first. There's a quarter note for the first beat, an eighth and two sixteens on the second beat. The next two beats echo this pattern. Since we're interested in playing sixteenth notes, we get our strumming set by going down on the eighth notes, so strumming every single sixteenth note would be like this:
BEAT: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
STRUM: D U D U D U D U D U D U D U D U

Now we just take out the sixteenth notes we're not playing:
BEAT: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
STRUM: D D D U D D D U

The second measure contains only quarter notes and eighth notes, so we adjust our strumming for eighth notes, meaning we'll go down on the beat and then up on the eighth notes between the beats. Again, if we were to fill an entire measure of eighth notes, it would be like this:
BEAT: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
STRUM: D U D U D U D U

Now we'll look at just the notes of the second measure. Starts out with a quarter note, then an eighth note, then a quarter note, and then an eighth followed by a quarter. Putting just these notes into the "down and up" pattern, then you would have this:
BEAT: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
STRUM: D D U U D

I know I come across as a grumpy old man when I say this, but you really have to get out of thinking in terms of "down and up" if you want to understand rhythms and to start counting. If you count the beats aloud to yourself, you'll hear where the strums are and you'll also understand where they fall in terms of arm motion. It's a lot easier than it sounds. See if you can get the fourth measure ("...in your eyes...") on your own, using the methods we just worked through.

Hope this helps. Now to see about re-editing that lesson!

Oh, and if this doesn't help, please don't hesitate to post again. That's what we're all here for. Looking forward to seeing you on the Forums.

Peace

Thanks so much for the explaination. It was exacly waht I was looking for
very helpful
bc