 Hi, I'm Freddie DeMarco for Black Star Potential and this lesson will be on an introduction to reggae style guitar. So with this style, you really want to study it, listen to it, watch some videos on it, because this style is really an art form. It's not just some upstrokes chinking along. A lot of guitar players, like, you know, I came from different styles in reggae. When I first started playing it, I was assuming, you know, that it was just some upstrokes and that. I actually learned a lot just by studying it a little bit and to get authentic to the style. Because this is a big interaction with the other players in the band. Really all live music should be that. But especially reggae, they'll really get a magical, you know, a lot of magical moments happening and certain things they'll do, they'll start swinging it and all that. And we want to be aware of how they're utilizing these techniques. So the first thing to be concerned with is the tone. I'm playing through the Black Star Artist 15, so this is 15 water, two channels. I'm in the first channel and I'm dialing in a very trebly sound. There sounds very trebly with a real cack, like percussive cack to it. And there's not much bass in the low strings. Because you may interpret a lot of the chink-chink sounds going on, like just the top couple strings, like you would hear in, like, Motown or some pop music, even funk music. And they do do that in this style in reggae. You'll hear just a couple of notes, but very often they're playing the full chord. But the low strings aren't boomy. The low strings, because of the treble and the bass rolled off and the treble boosted, it's more treated like a treble instrument. And you won't hear that boom, but you get a nice little weight in there to the tone when you do use the lower strings along with it. So if you listen closely, you'll hear that quite often. I have a little bit of reverb dialed in. You'll hear a lot of these guys play very dry. And some of them will play with reverb. I choose to have a little bit of reverb in my sound. So the first thing is we're just going to take a D minor chord on 10th fret and then go to a C major chord on 8th fret. And the thing is pulsating the left hand. A lot of times you'll just hear a cack where there's not much pitch at all. Other times you'll kind of finesse some pitch into the actual sound and play along with that. It's very important that your tone, your rhythm, and how you're using pitch and not using pitch is really working well with the right hand of the piano, chink, chink, chink, and the left hand of the organ. So being a more trebly, aggressive tone and it is pretty treble and aggressive. So it may sound a bit abrasive alone, but with the band it's correct. But that distinguishes you away from the mellower piano and organ. Also, the way you're going to play rhythm has to agree with the rest of the band, but yet you still need to stand out. So you're going to use, for this example, these two chords and we're going to hit on two and four of the measure. So if the measure is one, two, three, four, we're going to go one, two, three, four, like that, just to start with. So it's like this. I'm going to play with it where it's more cacky, meaning less pitch, less notes. And I'm going to pulsate notes. So you'll hear a variation here. Now reggae is downstrokes. A lot of times we think of them as upstrokes. They sound like they're up. That would be more like calypso music. The reggae, it's the two in form hitting on in this example, but they're downstrokes. And then you can add an upstroke to that. So we get it like this, one, so we want two and three, four and. Okay, now you can do some slides and some filler. You do very little filler in this music. Your role is pretty much playing almost like a snare drum part, that kind of a thing and keeping a percussive vibe going among the players. It's more your role. You will play some leads. So I suggest brushing up on some minor pentatonics and major pentatonics. And they don't play long lines. It's not very virtuosic, if you will. They're more like filler and nice little feel things. But the fills with the chords, there's some standard stuff that they do. And one of the main things is when they hit a note, they'll then land and use the higher strings with this part of the index finger and make a slide down. So it'll slide like this. It'll be, you know, this way to go. Or so, and I suggest practicing it like that. I'd actually play it more sparse. Practicing would be like this. Now, when I actually played in a song, I would probably play it more sparse, more random, less often, that kind of thing. There's another thing you need to know. Another role that you may play in ray game music would be playing stuck lines. Now stuck lines, it's just simply doubling the bass. So you're doubling a bass line, following the bass, but you'll palm mute. And you'll get a really nice khaki sound. So there's another benefit of having the amp set with more trouble on it. You want this khaki little percussive thing that sits right on top of the bass line. So maybe something like this, with palm muting, where the heel of the hand is right on the note, you know, not this. So, and you're just following bass lines that way. But getting that percussive khaki type of palm muting going. So I'm using downstroke, so they're consistent. Okay, then there's yet another element we want to talk about. And that's swinging. A lot of times, they'll start swinging. Notice that we're very militant and very straight. And what we've been doing so far like this, or the single strokes. But now this would be the swing. I like to stress again to really listen to the style and notice the little nuances that they're doing in the interaction between the band members when they play this. How they'll swing, when they'll swing, when they'll play very straight. Remember, they're downstrokes, you're not playing off the upstroke. You're playing with the downstroke, mostly on two and four. Remember to get a really nice finesse with the left hand when you're letting notes in, when you're being more percussive. And again, just listening to the style and really getting into the art form. Hey, thanks for joining me for this lesson on reggae guitar.