Strumming is essentially just down and up, down and up. Those are the only two directions you can go! Creating strum patterns is simply a matter of keeping a consistent downward and upward motion, and then purposefully missing a down or an up strum.

In music notation, you would see this as a rest or a tie, but you don’t have to know all that just yet, just try this little exercise:

Strum down and up on your guitar strings as if to a ticking clock. Tick (down) Tock (up).
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