Are you supposed also to pick up and down, alternate picking, chords. You know when you get some of them in a row, well or even if you just picked down then you get a chord do you pick that one up.

 

Or Chords are always picked down.

You can do whatever you feel like doing, there's no obligation to play them in anyway.

You can do whatever you feel like doing, there's no obligation to play them in anyway.

But my ears say to me a Chord does not sound the same if you pick it from the thinnest string to the thickest one, than if you do it from the thickest one to the thinnest. Or maybe thats bad fretting or picking on my part  :wacko:

@@Overpopulation no you're right, but since the game have no indicator for picking direction or style, you are free to do whatever you feel right. Note that at high speed, alternate picking becomes kinda inevitable too.

You have to decide on the sound that you want to achieve and whether or not you can execute it.  Paranoid by Black Sabbath is a good example of a song that uses all down strokes in the verse chords and it doesn't quite sound right if you use alternate strokes. Highway Star by Deep Purple sounds like all down strokes in the "chugging" sections-I could never play it properly using all down strokes and thought I was "cheating" until I saw Blackmore playing it live and he was using alternating strokes.  Iron Maiden uses different combinations depending on the effect they want and I am pretty sure that most of the signature "galloping" riffs use alternate strokes.

As Firekorn has said, there is a limit on how fast you can pick using only down strokes. The more strings you try to play at once using alternate picking, the more difficult it becomes, so build up your alternate picking technique on chords one string at a time.

you should check the RS Lessons Chords 202 and 203.

Search the net for Strum Patterns.

 

It's not an easy topic, as it depends on your strum rhythm, 1/8, 1/16 to achieve a strum pattern

 

Strum up often lefts out the lower 2 strings of the chord, so it sounds brighter.

Sometimes you find a chord showing only the upper two, three or four strings, followed by another chord with the same handshape, adding lower strings, then you know which to strum up. (ex. Neil Youngs Dead Man, rhythm arr.) 

 

Personnally I think it's the most disturbingly bad implemented technique in RS,

because it is not shown when you should start with a strum up. (ex. Blue Hotel starts with a strum up)

 

To visualize this clearer, I try to show upstrums as a chord without a box.

You can see this quite well in my cdlc : Gustavo Santaolalla Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) 

This helps me a lot, and I change the customs in this way.

 

I still look forward to do exercises on strum patterns, as soon as I've reached a satisfying knowledge on that topic

 

You can do whatever you feel like doing, there's no obligation to play them in anyway.

But my ears say to me a Chord does not sound the same if you pick it from the thinnest string to the thickest one, than if you do it from the thickest one to the thinnest. Or maybe thats bad fretting or picking on my part  :wacko:

 

 

Depends on the song honestly and how it was originally played/recorded. For instance, making an F5 shaped power chord, then doing all down strokes will sound more "chunkier" then up/down/up/down. But then you also have galloping picking. And that has it's own distinct sound too. 

 

As a general guide, most metal that has a lot of "chugging" or "chugs" will have mostly all down strokes (ie: Metallica, Pantera, Sepultura, ect.). While metal like iron maiden is a great example of having a lot of galloping, because it sounds like a horse galloping. There are many ways to "gallop", but the standard gallop picking pattern which can be done on single strings OR power chords is down(micro pause), down, up, down. The micro pause is basically created by the time it takes to get your pick back up to the low E string without picking or strumming any other stings on the way back up that first rotation.

 

Then you have picking up/down/up/down/up/down/up/down in a rapid succession. This is called tremolo picking, and makes a very cool "humming" sounds when done correctly with an open unmuted string or chord. This is used a lot in Black Metal acts such as Dimmu Borgir, Satyricon or Mayhem. Tremolo picking can also be performed on just one string also, muted or unmuted and is used in a TON of Death Metal acts such as Deicide, Vile, or Vital Remains as examples. 

 

Disclaimer I am hardly a pro(less than 3 years in), and probably not even a competent player by most measures, but all I play is metal, and mostly rhythm, so that is all I can really speak on. But just experiment and play around with different picking and you will start to learn how the sound of the songs you listen too are performed, mostly just by the sounds. I can definitely hear the difference between up and down picking. I too prefer to down stroke a single chord that is left to ring out, but I see a lot of guys go out of their way to strum a chord up to achieve the different sound. Most of the professional players I like, hardly strum a single chord up, mostly down, but maybe it's just because I play metal.

reggae uses upstrokes  ;)