 Hey, Freddie DeMarco here for Blackstar Potential, and this lesson will be on the introduction to ska guitar playing. So ska guitar playing actually started back in the 50s. They played it with a pretty clean sound, and it focused on all upstrokes and upbeats. And the modern ska is mixed with punk. It's played very brisk and fast. Also played clean, but sometimes with distortion, and still focusing on upbeats. So it's very related to the original ska, the modern stuff. And we're going to focus kind of on that. I do like an organic sound. So I like using an organic sounding amp for this kind of thing. I'm using the Blackstar Artist 15 in the second channel. So I have some EQ dial in to make it very bright. I want it to cut through, be very choppy like reggae. And I wouldn't be afraid of using the tone control on the guitar. So if I notice it too bright, I'll keep it down. But sometimes as the bands kick more, there's brass involved, you may need to have that trebly headroom and then leave enough room to bring up your tone control to spike through in case you need that. So that's how I approach that. But let's look at the rhythm for this. So if we have a measure that goes one, two, three, four. For every one of those beats, they could be subdivided using an and for the second half of the beat, like this. One, and two, and three, and four, and. And your role is to accent and play all those upstrokes in traditional ska that's all you would play, like this. Where in the modern stuff, you often hear a bass note or a cack on the one, and then the upstroke is still the dominant thing. That is how I suggest practicing if you're having a problem laying out on the one, because it really does display good rhythm technique. If you can play on the downbeat with the downstroke and the upstroke on the upbeat, and also be able to not play the downstroke and play just the upstroke to have that kind of control. So like this, this would be the downbeat with the cack and then the up. One, and two, and three, and four, and. And a lot of the modern ska would be moving like this. The left hand technique is very important. Notice I'm pulsating it. So I'm really keeping it muted all the time except for that and beat that I needed to sound. But just for that duration, I'm not letting it hang over. In other words, I'm not doing this. It's this, slowly. And I would practice to a metronome. Keep it very metronomic, because your role is to keep time. You're supposed to be spiking those upstrokes and giving the energy and the, you know, the fun to the song and lacing that rhythm together, though, by being very solid. So even just practicing the muted notes to get your down upstroke happening. Now you can achieve the same thing with all downstrokes. So it's still one and two and three and four and, but I'm going down, down, down, down, down, down like this. And that could be played very fast as well. So I'll do both. The cool thing about the down way of doing it where they're all downs is you can add an upstroke to your down hit. So I have a down then a down up. And that gives yet another rhythm that's used in ska music. Okay, another thing that you can do is you can actually play three strokes. So now each quarter note is divided into four. So people enunciate it many different ways, but simply one a and a two a and a three a and a four a and a. And you're just lay off the one and hit the other three of each beat. So it's still, you're still thinking. And remember, if you can lay off that first hit, that shows that good rhythm control. So it's simply, you know, this. When you play the more traditional ska, like from the fifties where they don't hit that, that bass note or that cack, and it's simply letting the bass guitar do it and they do more of a still stroke down. Don't sit there just with upstrokes waiting to hit like real mechanical. You want to feel it. So I still let that down happen. I just don't hit the strings very much like in funk music. When you're thinking in sixteenth notes, you may not hit everything, but I'm still motioning all that. And that's very important. So I'm still going with the down, even though I'm not hitting it. So the things to think about are those three main rhythms. And when you play fast, very relaxed and make sure that your pulsing hand is being very even too is how it's pulsing. And you are getting the mutes and you're only getting the stabs to come out, but you're getting those mutes to cat, not to sound like notes. Hey, thanks for joining me for this lesson on ska guitar playing.