What strumming patterns to use on new songs?

QUESTION:
I’ve been playing guitar for seven months now. How do I know which strumming patterns to use on other songs that aren’t in your 8chords100songs booklet? Do I just listen to the song and guess or what do I do? Thanks for the support! I love your program! It really helped me with the music theory and just guitar overall. Thanks again. – Online student 

ANSWER:

Listen to the song and most of the time, you are going to use  pattern 6 with some variation of accents and possibly a flip on the chord changes. 

Sometimes a simple quarter note strum will do as well.

When a strumming pattern in a song sound very syncopated or difficult, you can usually get to that point by starting with pattern 6 all 8th notes down and then add what is needed.

Get to know pattern 15 as well, it shows up a lot in songs.

Hope this helps!
Eric Roberts