Reggae

[Redsand187]

I'm wondering what is some good Reggae stuff to practice?

 

What my main idea is, Sublime. (Of course there is others, and Obviously Marley) I like a lot of the choppy rhythm stuff Brad does. But it's hard for me to make the transition from Hard Rock/Metal, and get into the Reggae playing style. Any tips, suggestions.

[Poparad]

There are only two steps needed to learn any style of music:


1) Listen to a lot of it

2) Play a lot of it.


Places like allmusic.com are great for finding other artists in a similar vein to the ones you like. Explore a lot of different people playing the same style to hear the different takes on the same type of music.

Also, play as much of it as you can. Learn the parts from the recordings and try to play along with them. The more songs you learn, the more you will notice that is the same between them (which are the important aspects of the style) and what things are different (which are the aspects of the individual musician and not the style as a whole).

[Slave_New_Wurld]

I'm not big on reggae, but isn't the rhythmic style of playing similar to that of funk? There are a lot of barred mutes and pick scrapes where your fretting hand also controls a good part of the actual rhythm.

Start using your fretting hand to raise off the fretboard (still touching the strings though) in rhythmic pulses, whilst keeping your strumming in a constant up-down motion - the string mutes (using your fretting hand) should pulse on one stroke, most often an upstroke.

I was gonna try do a lesson on reggae (as I'm using music genres to define the categories on my site) soon, once the site's more established.

[alez]

A lot of reggae songs use Im - bVIIm throughout the tune or a good part of it, the rithmic pattern is often:

||: Im | % | % | bVIIm :||

Sorry I'm not sure just now which keys are typical.

Any jazz stuff you would try over these chords works fine, you can think of these two chords as m7 chords (easier for scales).

Cheers,

Alex