Hi Kurt, that’s exactly the way I understand it.
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Cool, thanks, Judi! Fun riff!
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Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I completely missed the repeat brackets and indicator. Thank you for the clarification, now I get it.
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Can you use alternate picking for this? I know the video says all down picks but I find I’m just naturally alternating down and up- is this creating a bad habit?
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I’m guessing that Justin suggested all down-picking because this is early in learning to play and alternate picking can be difficult for some.
I think I used a mix - I’m traveling and do not have a guitar to check, but I feel like mostly down on the first half of the riff and then alternating on most of the second half feels natural to me. Listen to how using up and down sounds and see if you find a preference for some notes.
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Hi Bethany, and welcome to the community!! Hope you’re having a great time learning 
If you’re finding alternative strumming coming naturally then I wouldn’t be concerned, you’ll start to get to that as an option once you reach the C major scale module anyway. So long as your picking is clean and in time then I’d say carry on as you are 
PS - whilst you’re here, why not introduce yourself to the community with a post here. The place is great for whenever you need advice / inspiration / a place to vent your frustrations with chord changes / or just to have a natter. Everyone has been there and can help enormously
Enjoy! 
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Hi Bethany and welcome to JustinGuitar and the Community.
I would recommend you stick to the all-down picking.
Alternate picking, in the context of this riff, is Down Up repeated for each 8th. Down on the beats. Up on the off-beats.
The riff contains notes of different duration, some quarters and mostly eighths.
You could use strict alternate picking if you were careful, and making sure to miss a string at the correct moment. If you did this it would be played as shown below.
Note that the three notes highlighted are the pickup notes that get played at the end of bar two in identical manner because that is the point of return when the riff is repeated.
Whereas, if you simply play the riff using a DOwn then Up picks in rotation, but paying no heed to the rhythm and count, it would look like this one of these two:
Making sure the count of 1 in bar 1 was played with a Down
Starting the entire riff with a Down.
Neither of these are alternate picking. They will also teach you bad habits. Note how the Downs do not all fall on the beats.
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Now this is interesting. I have always thought of “alternate picking” as picking down on the beat and up off the beat, no matter which notes are actually played. In other words, if I were to pick out an Old Faithful rhythm on a single string with a pick
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D U U D
I would still call that alternate picking. Likewise, I would call the pattern you tabbed out above alternate picking. Am I wrong in my definition of alternate picking?
cool, this is really helpful! and more complicated than i thought lol but thank you for tabbing that out!
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