reggae guitar

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anders
  • Start date Start date
Anders said:
Anyone know how to get that reggae rhythm guitar sound?
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I think just about any "clean" tone will work as long as you consistently hit the backbeats (2 and 4).
 
Toots' guitar player has a straight Fender Strat. Marley played a Les Paul. Could go either way.
 
stonepiano said:
Toots' guitar player has a straight Fender Strat. Marley played a Les Paul. Could go either way.
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I've never heard a strat sound awesome for reggae though I guess it woud do, my Telecaster isn't bad at all.
Marley almost always played an LP. I think the dense body and hotter pickups give it a fuller throaty "chick" sound when clean and drowned in reverb like most reggae guys use. Les Paul w/p-90s might be interesting.
 
clean guitar, bridge pickup, lots of reverb. A wah pedal is optional. Strum swing 1/8 notes with emphasis on the 2 and 4. Make sure to mute the 1 and 3. Here's the most important part: get into the groove of the song.
 
I'm interested on this as well. Is there a recommended reverb pedal for this genre? I may need to look further but I'm having a hard time dialing something usable using my POD xt.
 
Downstrokes, not upstrokes.

Real reggae players use downstrokes for the 2&4 "chick" rhythm sound. Upstrokes make too tinny of a sound. A compressor will help even the volume between "chicks" and single-note riffs. Too much verb used too often sounds like shit.
 
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My reverb doesn't hit 4 when I play. I also use a bit of a delay, but again, not too much. And save the upstrokes for ska, like easychair said.
 
I was actually going to post a question like this too. This might be OT, or go beyond the scope of what we talk about in this forum, but I'm starting to find that most reggae is not played with power chords, but rather some form of chord inversions. Does anybody know anything about this, or where I might find a good article about inversions? I have struggled to learn how to play them since I started learning guitar.
 
dubstyle5000 said:
I I'm starting to find that most reggae is not played with power chords, but rather some form of chord inversions.
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This is a good question, ds5k. Here's my 2 cents.

For major chords, I see a lot of these two shapes.

C
-x--
-5--
-5--
-5--
-x--
-x--

F
-x--
-6--
-5--
-7--
-x--
-x--

For minor
Am
-5--
-5--
-5--
-5--
-x--
-5--

For dom7, this shape is pretty popular.

G7
-3--
-5--
-4--
-3--
-5--
-3--

Slide around the neck depending on the key.

In all these cases, I figure these are popular mostly for the ease in which they can be muted, a fundamental part of reggae guitar playing. :D
 
As far as Marley goes, remember that he was playing a Les Paul Jr. with two P-90 pickups, not humbuckers.
 
Two tips, learn 6ths chords, and throw away your pick. I've never been able to get the hang of it, maybe I never smoked enough ganja to get into the groove.
 
Now I'm not a guitarist but one of my friends plays a lot of reggae and in it's most basic form it seems to be:

1 - down with chord
& - up with different chord (open strings in most basic case)
2 - down with chord
&
3 - down with chord
& - up with diff...
4 - down with chord

Seems to work.
 
Plus 1 for stonepiano. That was a great post, very helpful.
 
reggae chords

dubstyle5000 said:
I was actually going to post a question like this too. This might be OT, or go beyond the scope of what we talk about in this forum, but I'm starting to find that most reggae is not played with power chords, but rather some form of chord inversions. Does anybody know anything about this, or where I might find a good article about inversions? I have struggled to learn how to play them since I started learning guitar.
Click to expand...

check out wholenote.com and search for reggae guitar lesson, thats some reggae chord progression and song structure and cool stuff.
 
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