When playing guitar I stumble upon tabs that either have striking the chords, brushing them with the pick, doing a crescendo or playing them as an arpeggio. As far as I learned when you strike you hit all the notes of the chord simultaneously, when you brush a chord you just hit the notes all the way up or down, a crescendo strum is a kind of a brush downward but you stop on every note. And arpeggio is just picking them in order.
Am I right with what I think I know?
Unfortunately you haven't really got those right. Here are the correct meanings:
striking means to play through the strings, hitting them as simultaneously as possible. As it is not actually simultaneous, an upstroke sounds different to a downstroke as the order of hitting the strings is different.
brushing is an odd term that doesn't appear to have a single meaning. It can either mean a slower version of striking, or it can mean a lighter version (i.e. Holding the pick more softly
arpeggio is playing the notes of a chord, not necessarily in order, with an audible delay between them.
crescendo is the odd one out. This term doesn't have a connection with playing a chord, but instead is an increase in volume over time. E.g. If you were strumming, and you wanted to play 4 bars of strumming with and increase in volume from the 3rd bar to the 4th you could have a crescendo there.
