: How to discover the strum of guitar tabs? This is the tab I'm using for "Pogues - Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn tab" I'm using But what is the strum of each of the notes ? For example for the C chord is it "Down,Up,Down,Up,Down,Down"

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There is a method in discovering the strums. In general you can air strum the entire time doing down, followed by up. If you follow the rhythm and only touch the strings when a chord is played in the song, you will get it. A nice example to discover this (but pretty hard), is Get Lucky. Check that rhythm guitar out :).

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You have to hear the song in order to find the strumming pattern. The tabs don't give good rhythm indicators. Basically strumming on quarter notes is down on each beat. On eight notes down on the downbeat and up on the upbeat. Sixteenth notes would be down and up on each. Depending on the tempo it will vary as far as patterns.

Get a feel for the rhythm by ear and remember basic fundamentals of strumming and it will fall into place. Get Lucky is a pattern that is groovy and requires practice and understanding of fundamentals to nail down. You have to know where the downbeat is. Understand how many beats are in the measure and most important where beat one is for each measure.