Lesson Ten

Subjects Covered - Lesson 10

• Chords
  • Simple reggae riddims
• Scales
  • Playing the major scale, the major pentatonic scale and the blues scale
• Musicality
  • Playing reggae licks
• Exercises
  • Reggae riddim

The main points for this whole course are

• keep your hands relaxed
• keep your guitar in tune
• play in time, with the rhythm
• musicality always beats technicality
• practice too slow instead of too fast
• play along to records whenever you can
• play with other people whenever you can

Reggae history

Brief Background

Most chords in reggae are the same chords you would find in rock and rock. Dub does seem to have some more jazz chords, though. We are going to learn different ways to play the same chords that were used in lesson 8 (50s rock and roll in G except the e minor). If you listen to early Bob Marley recordings \ you can hear the three and four chord 50s rock and roll/doo wop sound in some of the songs that I guess people would call either early reggae or rocksteady.

If you are interested in learning a bit more about reggae history. Here are a couple of links:

• History of Reggae
• BBC's History of Reggae

Reggae Chords

Partial Bar Chords

Though one can reggae using the chords we already know, it is an appropriate time to learn bar chords. Bar chords are used in all styles of music. Partial chords are easier to learn and you can start playing them in a day or two. Basically, you use the same finger of your left hand to play more than one note.

• keeping the rhythm is more important than playing all the notes
• play in time

| G | C | D | C |

Playing on 2 and 4

In reggae, the general rule of thumb is that the guitar plays on the 2 and 4 or on the 'and' of each beat. For example, in "Waiting in Vain" on Legends, you could say the guitar was on the 2 and 4 or the 'and', depending on how you count the beat. If you listen to people playing, usually the guitar plays something along those lines, but it isn't exactly always the 2 and 4 or the 'and'. In GuitarKitchen, we will say it's on the 2 and 4.

Songs to practice

These are from the Legends album. Use the major chord form that you just learned, plus this minor bar chord form. This will allow to most all these songs. This minor chord is an a minor. You can use the chord form and play it on different frets, depending on the song.

Stir it

These chords are A, A, D and then E. These three chords are the same chord forms as the G, C, D chords. Instead of playing on the 3rd, 8th and 10th frets, play them on the 5th, 10th and the 12th frets If the 12th fret is hard to play, you can play it as an open chord. There is one other part to the song, but you should try to figure it out yourself. It uses two of three chords.

Don't Worry

It's in the key of A, so try and figure it out!