Reggae Rhythm Guitar Lesson

Reggae Rhythm Guitar Lesson Hey everyone this is Bryan from ActiveMelody.com in this guitar lesson we’re going to learn how to play a reggae style guitar rhythm part. So be sure to go to ActiveMelody.com to download the tablature and jam track for this lesson if you need it, let’s get started. [Demonstration] All right so the reason that I choose a reggae lesson this week beside the fact that reggae is just fun to play is because there is a lot of fundamentals you get when you playing reggae that will translate to other styles of music and primarily what I’m talking about is the muting that you do with the left hand here. So instead of just letting your chords ring out, you learn when you’re just learning to play guitar, usually what you learn is down here at the first position and you don’t use any sort of a muting effect but as you start to learn to play chords up and down the neck, muting with the left hand is really important and it gives you all kinds of that’s how you get your rhythm. So you can get all kinds of cool rhythm effects by this muting effect. It doesn’t matter if you are playing reggae like I said or blues or jazz. So what I'm doing here and the nice thing about this lesson is that I’m pretty much playing the same rhythm throughout the whole song, so if you get it and once you get it you got the song but I’m playing an A minor seventh chord and what I’m doing is I’m baring the fifth fret here, the entire fifth fret, I’m using my ring finger on the A string or the fifth string the seventh fret there to create that chord. And what I’m doing if I slow it down is I’m doing this, so I’m starting with the low note which is an A in this case, so I’m just hitting the note the sixth string there and I’m doing this, down, up, down, down, down, down, up, down, down. Now the first you’re going to do is to try and get the right hand, so you get the right hand going—down just that one string down, down, up, down, down, down, down, up, down, down. Start it real slow and once you get that rhythm going a little bit, it’s going to be crude in the beginning but what really make its work is this muting here with the left hand so what I’m doing is I’m pushing down, so you see that so it’s down, up is the full chord then I release here the pressure with my left hand and do a down with a mute, push down again to get another ring so its—and when I play that last little note I just let it ring out quick and then I mute it so I go—and what I’m doing there, I’m pushing down, releasing, keeping the hand in position the whole time so it’s— Can you see what I’m doing there? It’s all about applying pressure and releasing the pressure so it’s—release it, push it down and release it. Okay just practice that, that’s really important and remember start with the right hand first then try making the chord and doing the muting with the left hand then we keep the bar to go into the next chord, we keep the bar on the fifth fret and we play this—it’s a D minor 7 chord. So what I’m doing there is I’m taking my middle finger pushing down on the sixth fret, the second string or the B string, I'm taking my ring finger and push it down on the seventh fret D sting or the fourth string like that so—and I'm only playing this five strings. I'm not playing the six strings so on that, the bass note that I'm hitting is this note right here which is a D but it’s on the A string there or the fifth string so I'm hitting that and then I'm going doing the same effect. Sometimes you will accidentally—its kind a hard to do specially in the beginning and I just did it right there—you’ll accidentally kind of jump down and maybe hit the wrong string. That’s okay especially when you got the jam track going because you’ll never even really hear this note, it’s more of just a—it’s kind of a reference note for when you’re playing by yourself. So that’s what you do for second, so the first part is—then you go into the second part and go—then I go—I just slide that whole thing up two frets keeping my fingers in the exact same position when I do that other little part and then back to the A and that’s really all there is to this song. Now I'm going to play through this whole thing very slowly and by the way, when you’re first learning this, do this slow, don’t try and do this up to speed. Accuracy in the beginning is way more important than playing it fast, so I know I got the jam track that you can practice with but you may not be able to that in the beginning. That’s okay, just try and get it accurate but it’s important to point out what I'm doing here the back of the neck, I’ve got my thumb pushing down and all this is, is just a matter of squeezing to create the chord and releasing, squeezing and releasing that’s how you get that muted effect with the left hand so it’s squeezing, releasing, squeeze, release, so let me do I’m going to play that through the whole all the chords very slow, here is what it looks like. [Demonstration] And that’s all there is to it, I hope this one is not too challenging for you. Just keep practicing, if you can get up to the speed of the jam track you’ve really made some progress these are licks that you’re going to use throughout the rest of your years of playing the guitar and they’re going to come in handy, you hear a lot of them in reggae but you’ll find yourself using these licks in all kinds of different styles of playing. Be sure again to check out the ActiveMelody.com and download the jam track for this lesson if you need to, there’s also a tablature. We’ll see you in the next lesson.