Hi guys :) I just got into reggae songwriting and right now my songs consists of guitar and lead vocals only. The guitar accompaniment is pretty confined to off-beat chucks, sometimes with muted chucks on the beat, and I'd like to expand into something more dynamic, like what's being played along with the vocals in the Yvette Acoustic Tape (1976) by Bob Marley. I'm trying to mimic the style, but I can't hear what's going on. Probably because of the quality of the tape, but then there's so much going on. Sometimes only basslines, sometimes very strummy, and the strumming pattern keeps changing in ways that seem arbitrary. I bet it's a lot of feeling and experience involved, but do you know of any exercises that could help develop his kind of guitar accompaniment style? Other than the "down, down, down up, down. down up, down up, down, down"-type exercises. [br][br]Also, what style would you say these songs are? I'd say reggae because that's what I associate Bob with, but there's not really any accentuation of the off-beat, no reggae bass or one-drop beat. Then again, it doesn't sound like your typical singer-songwriter.
Rhythm style: Bob Marley - the Yvette Tapes
hello
yes i don't think the version of the tape is great
this may not because the original tape was bad
but it sounds to me that the quality of the encoding is particularly bad
this occured in early audio format compression, i.e. MP3s etc.
that used lossy encoding algorhythms
so hard to tell what is going on.
remember that Bob Marley's acoustic playing was fairly idiosyncratic
although he did write loads of great songs on the acoustic
most of them got translated to full band
although there are a few exceptions of classic reggae acoustic songs that Bob Marley wrote for the acoustic guitar such as redemption song and no woman no cry
a fair amount of the books on the market give acoustic versions of most his songs
but many of these are acoustic interpretations that aren't really authentic
there are also a few books on the market that explain how to play reggae on the electric guitar and some of the bob marley (and other bands) how to play song books do give the chords that were used on the recordings
Bob Marley, Pete tosh etc, usually used top 3 string tiads (while muting the other three strings), as well as the occassional barre chord to play most of their electric reggae
occassionally when they want a bigger fuller sound they may also use open chords
but due to the open nature these chords aren't under a finger that can mute them
so are harder to control and harder to get the muted rhythms that are so synonomous with good authentic reggae
btw the two main types of chord chops in reggae guitar
are called bang and chucka
the bang being a single syncopated hit
the chucka is a syncopated double hit
these are also then syncronated with sparse authentic reggae drum patterns
melodic bass guitar that leaves space for other elements to breath
and sometimes bubbles rhythm played on a keyboard that adds
extra energy which can often be mixed subtley in
the vocals are also really important
and when it comes to Bob Marley and the Wailers
you can hear all sorts of influences
but especially early rhythm and blues and soul
if you listen to how the lead vocals are arranged with the backing vocals
very US rhythm and blues of the late 50s and 60s
this i also believe is where they got the infleunce from the horn section too
that and the latter genres such as funk etc.
hello
yes i don't think the version of the tape is great
this may not because the original tape was bad
but it sounds to me that the quality of the encoding is particularly bad
this occured in early audio format compression, i.e. MP3s etc.
that used lossy encoding algorhythms
so hard to tell what is going on.
remember that Bob Marley's acoustic playing was fairly idiosyncratic
although he did write loads of great songs on the acoustic
most of them got translated to full band
although there are a few exceptions of classic reggae acoustic songs that Bob Marley wrote for the acoustic guitar such as redemption song and no woman no cry
a fair amount of the books on the market give acoustic versions of most his songs
but many of these are acoustic interpretations that aren't really authentic
there are also a few books on the market that explain how to play reggae on the electric guitar and some of the bob marley (and other bands) how to play song books do give the chords that were used on the recordings
Bob Marley, Pete tosh etc, usually used top 3 string tiads (while muting the other three strings), as well as the occassional barre chord to play most of their electric reggae
occassionally when they want a bigger fuller sound they may also use open chords
but due to the open nature these chords aren't under a finger that can mute them
so are harder to control and harder to get the muted rhythms that are so synonomous with good authentic reggae
btw the two main types of chord chops in reggae guitar
are called bang and chucka
the bang being a single syncopated hit
the chucka is a syncopated double hit
these are also then syncronated with sparse authentic reggae drum patterns
melodic bass guitar that leaves space for other elements to breath
and sometimes bubbles rhythm played on a keyboard that adds
extra energy which can often be mixed subtley in
the vocals are also really important
and when it comes to Bob Marley and the Wailers
you can hear all sorts of influences
but especially early rhythm and blues and soul
if you listen to how the lead vocals are arranged with the backing vocals
very US rhythm and blues of the late 50s and 60s
this i also believe is where they got the infleunce from the horn section too
that and the latter genres such as funk etc.
