Archiv der Kategorie: English guitar articles

Reggae guitar strumming and rhythm

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Reggae is a musical genre created in the late 1960s by Jamaicans of African origin. Reggae artists use musical idioms from a variety of genres, such as mento (a Jamaican folk form), ska, rocksteady, calypso, and American soul and rhythm and blues.

The genre’s powerful percussion, hypnotic bass lines & steady up-stroke rhythm guitar (dubbed the „skank beat“) have all contributed to its success as a dance music genre. Lyrics in Jamaican English, Jamaican Patois, or Iyaric dialects appear in the majority of reggae songs.

How to strum reggae guitar rhythms?

There are some specific techniques for both the fretting and the picking hand to create a reggae rhythm.

Fretting Hand Technique

Keep your fretting hand softly (just touch the strings instead of pressing) on top of the strings. This will mute your guitar sound when you strum with your picking hand. Now, immediately press down on the top three strings When the picking hand strikes the chord, This time it will make a staccato sound. Start with the strings muted and work your way up to pressing them down.

Picking Hand Technique

The picking hand plays an important role to come up with the reggae rhythm on guitar. While you are strumming the strings, put some power on your picking hand and attack the strings to make accents. Instead of strumming, chop the strings to make it sound more like a reggae rhythm. This will also give a some short of purcusssive instrumental fellings.

After understanding the mechanism of both hands, its time to learn some reggae guitar strumming pattern.

Reggae Guitar Strumming Patterns

Pattern 1

Playing a downstroke on the offbeat of the rhythm is the most prevalent reggae rhythm guitar pattern. In a 4:4 time signature song, the offbeat is on the „and“ that occurs between the beats. So, instead of counting the beats „1… 2… 3… 4,“ put a „and“ in between each main beat. Now play a down stroke on each “and”. Follow the image below.

Pattern 2

This is the 2nd most popular strumming pattern in reggae music. It’s now a down and up stroke on the offbeat, rather than just a downstroke like the previous pattern. Follow the image above.

Things To Keep In Mind While You Are Practicing The Patterns

In reggae, string strumming is referred to by a variety of names. Some refer to it as a ‚ska stroke‚ ,’chop‘, ’skank‘, or ‚bang‘.

There are some exceptions to the rule of „play on the offbeat.“ Music is primarily about conveying emotion or getting into a groove. After you become experienced in learning these two patterns, you can actually alternate between them. Like, play down stroke on the 1st off beat and then play down-up stroke on the 2nd off beat. Feel free to do the opposite as well. Details are explained on the picture below.

Muting the strings and focusing on the strum pattern will help you pick up the groove of reggae music faster.

Best Way To Learn Reggae Guitar

The best way to learn reggae guitar is to listen to your favourite reggae songs and try to play guitar along with the song. Begin with these two fundamental patterns, and then modify them to create your own reggae guitar strumming patterns.

Advance Reggae Guitar tips

  • Adjust your fretting hand pressure while you are strumming. Try to experiment with different pressure level (extreamly light pressure, moderate pressure & heavy pressure) and invent different reggae sounds. Experiment with pressure duration as well.
  • Try to strum in a harmonic & percussive fashion. Try this especially with bar chords that span the entire fret. Maintain a loose playing arm and swing it down to strum your hand across all strings, from the first to the last.
  • Play the variation of different chords in different fret positions. Select the position of chords that sounds same to your selected songs. Don’t forget to experiment with different fret position of chords as well. But select the positions that makes it easy to play the chord progression.
  • Bob Marley and the Wailers, Prince Buster, and Jackie Mittoo are some well-known reggae musicians to listen to. Take note of how these musicians and your favorite reggae guitarists play their songs and try to imitate them.

Some Popular Reggae Guitar Chord Progressions

On Night Nurse, Gregory Isaacs used this reggae chord progression. There are only two chords.

A minor – G major.

On 96 Degrees In The Shade, Third World used the following reggae chord progression.

A minor – G major for the verse & C major – G major – A minor for the chorus.

This reggae chord sequence was used by Bob Marley and other reggae singers on the song No Woman, No Cry.

C major – G major – A minor – F major – C major – G major C major – G major. The intro, verse, chorus, and bridge can all use this reggae chord sequence.

Bob Marley popularized the next reggae chord sequence – Stir It Up.

A major – D major – E major. Bob, on the other hand, is employing the chuck technique here.

Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars made this reggae chord progression famous with their song „Billionaire.“

Intro : A – C#7 – F#m – E

           D – E – F#m x2

           D – E – A – G#m – F#m – E – D – C#7

Verse : Same as intro.

Chorus: A – Bm

This article was written by a freelance author ‚Rahman‘ solely for House of Rock website. If you would like to take guitar lessons in Vienna , just contact me here

How to improvise a guitar solo

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To lots of guitar players, improvising and soloing seems to be a game of choosing the correct scale to play with. Choosing a scale is a great shortcut to improvising, especially when it comes to blues music, but ignores many of the other key parts of soloing. Soloing is also a dance between rhythm choices, chord tones, and melodic creation. (Die deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels ist hier)

At this point you may be thinking, “Oh no more theory here we go again.” Nobody should be scared of learning theory. If you play chords and scales, you already use it all the time. Theory just helps you decide what notes to use when you’re improvising, that’s all! 

So with that in mind, let’s talk about the easiest scale to start using and improvising with……

Your First Scale

E Minor Pentatonic

If you’ve ever opened a book of guitar scales before, then you know that there is an overwhelming amount to choose from. Thankfully, the minor pentatonic scale is an extremely versatile scale that you can not only start using right away, but that is also easy to transform into other basic scales like major scales and minor scales. 

The E Minor pentatonic is what we’ll talk about here, and it consists of just five notes: E – G – A – B – D. It’s not important to learn the notes though. All you need is a pattern, like this one below: 

I’m sure you’ll get addicted to soloing once you start to mess around with it a little!

This one pattern right here is the source of so many guitar solos and licks that you’ll learn from here on out. It’s quite mind blowing how this one pattern appears in jazz, country, metal, rock, and pop music too. 

All you need to do right now is just play the scale as shown in the tab below. You can play it straight up and down, bend a few notes, skip some notes, rest on a few at a time, or play them however you want. 

The Target Note Concept

If you start learning solos from Guns n’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and many others you’re going to see that pattern above used nearly everywhere. However, how do you actually start to use it like they do? 

That’s where the game of improvising and soloing comes into play. You will need to choose what scales, or what notes in general, to play over every chord that the rest of the band is playing. That’s the easy answer to how to improvise. The hard part though is deciding what notes to play and why. 

A concept that will help you now, and for the rest of your guitar playing days, is something called the target note concept. All you do is choose a note that you’ll play when a certain chord comes up. So think of it like changing chords. You can focus on playing one note, like E, then decide to play an A note later on. 

A very common chord progression is to play E major to A major, like the tab shows below: 

When you’re wanting to play over E major, play the E note, or the other notes of the E chord like G# and B. When you’re playing over an A, play the A, C#, or E. This is basically how improvising works! 

This rule is not strict though, which can further confuse you. You can also use scales other than E minor pentatonic to play over these chords. However that requires a longer discussion of how chords and key signatures are made. For now, just remember the simple rule that you must play a matching note for the relevant chord you’re playing over.

How To Learn The Notes On The Guitar Quickly

Now you know the basic “rules” of soloing and improvising. Now you’ve got to learn the notes on the fretboard so that you can apply these ideas in the best way possible. 

Lots of websites online may claim that there’s some easy way to do this. There isn’t. You’ve got to find an image of the fretboard down below, and memorize the notes one by one.

A few things to take note of: 

1) This is in standard tuning to E natural

2) All the notes repeat after the 12th fret. So open G is also G at the 12th fret of the G string. 

3) Learn the “natural” notes like C, D, E, F, G, B, and A first everywhere. Everything else is either C# or Db for instance. 

4) There’s no notes between B and C, or E and F. So except for some weird situation where you’re playing in Cb major, there is no Cb or Fb you’ll run into anytime soon. 

5) All the notes on low E and high E will have the same notes at each fret. So the note B on the high E string will also be a B on the low E string. 

All of that aside, just print out an image of the fretboard, or save an image of the fretboard on your smart device. You can learn a note at a time, or a fret at a time. In my opinion, it’s easier to learn a fret at a time. 

You’ll still need to practice finding and using these notes though! The first time learning these notes will be awkward and confusing, but push through it and you can start focusing on soloing.

The Caged Concept 

Once you learn the notes of the fretboard, you can use the scale pattern you learned above, as well as many others as you go along, much easier and quicker. However you’re going to want a way to organize all of these patterns and see the scale across the fretboard. 

A scale book will help you see the rest of the patterns of a scale like E minor pentatonic, but you can also use a structure many people call the “CAGED” system. It’s pretty simple if you already know the chords C major, A major, G major, E major, and D major. 

Look for the D shape at the 12th fret, the C shape between the 1st and 3rd frets, the A shape at the 5th fret, the G shape between the 7th and 8th frets, and finally the E shape at the 10th fret. Reread that last sentence carefully before moving on. Do you see the chords? 

This is one of the absolute best ways to see and remember the most popular chord shapes down the fretboard. Once you learn more scales, and learn more about how chords work with scales, you’ll be able to use this system to improvise all over the fretboard. 

You can also just learn the patterns of certain scales one by one. However, for improvising and soloing, it’s important that you learn as many chord shapes up and down the neck as possible.

Quick Recap 

To quickly cover the concepts we just laid out, let’s list them below: 

1) Start playing the E minor pentatonic scale as shown above. This scale will be the basis of many other scales you’ll learn in the near future. Don’t apply any rules to how you play with it! 

2) Use the target note concept to plan where you’ll be on the fretboard when playing over chords. Just choose one note on one fret, and do that with every chord you’ll come across. 

3) Take some time to print out or save an image of the entire fretboard with the notes on each fret. Memorize each fret at a time, and start using this information asap. 

4) Taking the time to learn the CAGED system will help you when planning the target notes and choosing your scales. This will help you better see the chord shapes you’re working over as the music moves along. 

There are lots of principles of guitar soloing and improvising that I can teach you. If this article has been helpful, I’ll hope you contact me for a guitar lesson. Thanks for reading!