 Hi, and welcome to another guitar lesson here for the NCSSM piano and guitar curriculum. Now, at this point, you've learned your open chords on the guitar, and I want to really take a little bit of time to talk about strumming, because I think one of the areas that a lot of students hear good guitar players playing, and they do these sort of complex rhythms when they're strumming, and it's a much simpler process than you might realize. So I want to take a little bit of time and sort of explain the theory to you. So first of all, when you're strumming the guitar, what we want to find is some kind of an inner rhythm to the song that we're using, and usually I liken that to 16th notes. If we have the pulse of a song that is just simply 1, 2, 3, 4, then the strum inner rhythm is typically 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, and so if I were to play that pattern strumming, it's something like this. Now that's a pretty vanilla strumming pattern, and it's not something we use very often. But the visual of you seeing my hand going up and down in that 16th note passage is really the important part. You're going to notice that for all the strumming patterns that I show you, my hand is still going to move in that exact same motion, and I'm really going to pick and choose where I allow the pick or my thumb to hit the strings to create the rhythm. Let me show you. If I just want the rhythm to be quarter notes or right on the beat, I would do something like this. And you'll notice even though I'm playing on the first of every four 16th notes, I'm still making the motion of 16th notes. And let me say this, this also keeps you from rushing in a song, and that's an important part of it as well. It really allows you to feel the beat, and it's kind of like dancing in a way. You keep that pulse and that rhythm going. Inner rhythm is so important. So there's one. That's just quarter notes. Now, you're not going to use that all that often either. Let's do eighth notes. So now it would be every other 16th note. And I'm really just hitting on every down stroke. If I'm going down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, I'm really just hitting down, down, down, down, down. Again, pretty vanilla, not a really interesting rhythm. But let's start doing a few of the up strokes. And again, this is a down stroke. This is an up stroke. What if I did an up stroke on every other set? Let's see if I can do it. Again, visually, it's the same look. My hand's doing the same thing. I'm not changing this pattern at all. It's down, up, down, up, all the way. But I'm just choosing where the pick is making contact with the string. And then we start getting into some really interesting things. How about if I do a quarter note and then a down, an up, skip the down, and another up? Let's see what that sounds like. And this really becomes a feel issue as you go. Probably everybody has heard this picking pattern or strumming pattern. And again, this really becomes a matter of feel. The important concept here is that your right hand is always moving in the 16th note pattern. And you'll learn to change the chords in your left hand to really match that rhythm. And it really gets quite natural after a while. You don't really have to think about it at all. But really, as you go, you'll be able to create very, very complex rhythms with your right hand without doing anything different than down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. So I want you to work on that. Start out with just that basic pattern. Do the quarter notes, then try eighths, then start adding some upstrokes. And you'll come up with some really neat strumming patterns in a very short period of time. Good luck. And when you've worked this out a little bit, show me what you're doing. Let me help you out a little bit in person.