Reading scores

[Ikiru]

I've been reading sheet music to learn acoustic songs and I'm stumped with some doubts.
What does bracketed/circled notes mean? I've seen it in Guitar Pro as well.
And some scores would show strumming patterns, but I don't understand the variations in the patterns.

Just to make sure, does this one means to stroke all strings in the chord? (Circled note?)

Then what's the difference if the strokes happen to be completely above/below the bar?

And what's this?

Thanks!

 

[naviros]

Wow, they're not in circles... LOL... No idea... This doesn't even look like a score to me... Or rather this ain't a musical score...

 

[Ikiru]

Technically not, it's more like something to show strumming, the musical notes are above it

 

[naviros]

You should seriously ask a Jap or something. This is not standard music notation. Even for strumming, normally its with a music notation bar with the bars going through the strings that are needed to strum, ie. 1-6, bar will run through all 6 lines in a bar.

 

[Ikiru]

The Japanese I know probably won't understand notation anyway. Gotta brush up my own Japanese skills to read the instructions now. thanks anyway. The only difference between that and the ones in my guitar book from my lessons is that this one has 1 line and varation while the yamaha book is basic.

 

[fuzztremecho]

any chords above it?looked more like a chord/rythm notation chart to me..
it shows downstroke and upstroke

 

[Faizalhacker]

this is a japan score...

 

[Ikiru]

Yeah, there are chords, that is the strumming pattern and some of it at the beginning of the song does shows upstrokes/downstrokes but the not change in level of the bars

 

[fuzztremecho]

the slash thingy below the line=downstroke
above the line=upstroke..although there is an indication of downstroke above the 3rd fig.2nd pic..ie..you could do a downstroke or an upstroke as long as it is in time..

 

[Ikiru]

I see.. thanks! I can't show the whole score because my scanner's down but I'll figure it out myself from here.

 

[fuzztremecho]

no prob bro
keep on rocking

 

[Dime]

looks more like rhythm pattern than chords.