 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to explore the basics of the genre reggae and I am going to try and give you some patterns which seem to have worked for me and most of my band members playing different instruments and I have tested this out with a lot of reggae songs especially Bob Marley songs which are very famous as you probably already know. So I am going to start with a very simple comping pattern and then go forward from there with left hand ghost notes, bring in some swing, trying to delay and break up some chords. There will be a lot of patterns so stay tuned till the end. We will also start making some arpeggios happen in both the left hand and the right hand some reggae arpeggios if that is the term for it. So we will start with just chords with block chords in the right hand. We will start with just some left hand simple root and fifth kind of comping and then see how it goes. So before we get started it will be nice if you can follow the lesson with our staff notation midi tracks if you wish and my hand written notes for not only this one but the others as well which keep happening on our page and also don't forget to hit that subscribe button in the bell for regular notifications or hit it at the end or somewhere during the video if you remember. So let's get cracking. I have an interesting chord progression for you. I didn't want to do the standard one 1564 we do that all the time on YouTube and I don't like C major as you know C major on our channel is absolutely illegal. So we will take B flat and see where we go from there and add some interesting maybe a borrowed chord at the end. So I am going to think of this progression now B flat major then we will go to F major so I am pretty much in the key of B flat E flat major and then E flat minor. We could play this first of all with some nice inversions so if you are starting with maybe the root position of B flat you can play F major like this E flat major like this E flat minor like this all using inversions if you feel your inversion knowledge is a bit sluggish you can check out our playlist on chord inversions we leave you the link in the YouTube description. So if I do first inversion of B flat I did root if I do first inversion of B flat F would come here maybe E flat major E flat minor so the chords remember B flat F E flat major E flat minor and then I can what I like is the second inversion around middle C it sits well for my years at least so F B flat D F A C E flat major E flat minor or you can even do B flat F go upper to E flat E flat minor anyway so that's about inversions so good way to start off with your reggae journey is to focus on a little bit of swing divide by four and start focusing on those divisions so if I do one two three four four by four with swing one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a rather than one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a which is straight music so swing would be one E and a two E and a that's getting that swing going that's a good feeling now if you're not able to get the swing instantly it's okay focus just on the and so maybe one and two and three and but think of the swing if possible and four E and E and so this itself kind of gets you into the world of reggae tap your pulse probably with your foot on the ground or just move your head and two and three and four and one and two three and maybe snap at the end or something and four and one and four and one and two there we go so this and is generally played especially in traditional reggae music by the guitar player of the band and it's generally done you know very staccato so that's what I'm going to try and do now in the right hand and just catch the ends okay so that you've got your guitar player now covered okay now what about your bass player a bass player traditionally in a band will end up focusing on the pulse so one so you can do that one and two and three and four so just do the ones one and two and leave off the the alternate so you don't have to do one and two you could also do this but then you may ruin the swing you know it will start na na na na na na na na na so there's a fine line in there you don't want to play too fast also because very soon we're going to get the swing which we need for reggae and produce that swing on the piano so give it some air to breathe the and two so let's do this across the chord progression B flat F E flat E flat minor B flat F E flat E flat I'm snapping at the beat which I'm not playing in the left hand just so you know keep that and going said try to swing this can kind of work for a lot of songs for example buffalo soldier in the heart of America not any other Bob Marley song stir it up a little darling and steer it up oh come on baby oh maybe I know my no cry everything's gonna be alright everything's gonna be alright oh yeah that was that Jason Maras song I don't know what it's called I'm you might know but some of these songs just hit you because reggae is a very famous pattern it's used by artists who don't even call themselves reggae oh you might just end up coming up with the reggae bridge or reggae intro or a solo in your in your song so now that we've got that pattern under the belt let's now bring in some flair and a lot of variations so let's see where we can go from here the next increment would be just to add a fifth at the E of every alternate beat in the left hand okay I'll break that down for you and we need to play that E as a staccato one and two one and this is where now you have to start dividing by two by four so one and two and four and one and two and three and you get some serious reggae going two ways to get this fifth you can either whack it up top okay this is the true fifth of the chord the perfect fifth it has nothing to do with the right hand inversion inversions in the right hand are just for convenience while in the left hand you're playing the true root which is B flat and the true fifth which is F so without that flavor one E and two E and three E and with the flavor one so if you want to get the music to flow sort of like a boat sailing you can go you can alternate between your staccatos and legato in the right hand not just only staccato because the left hand's giving you that excitement here and there you could elongate the right hand so the combo of legato and staccato is very very important and for piano players you're almost never using your pedal your sustained pedal for this genre at least i'm not be all right everything's gonna be all right with the chord progression B flat F E flat E flat minor B flat F E flat and E flat minor okay so we call this you could also call this the ghost of the E because the E is very short it's the one with playing the root which is the the point the main focus now we can alternate in the right hand we don't have to just play one knee and why not do and a and then and one knee one knee and so i'm clustering that and in the and alternating next beat i'll not do and i'm not going to do one knee and two E and three E and i don't want that busyness rather i could do one knee and and one knee and two E and and one knee and two E and three E and four E and okay i can flip that around now and do and and then uh and uh of the next alternate beat one again this ghost of the E is a nice flavor one knee don't forget to swing okay so either the and and and or and and and in the right hand the left hand either plays just the one three or as the one knee and two E and four E so two E and four E okay now to make things a bit more interesting we can start bringing in the chord tones of the chord in the left hand right now we were doing and two we're just doing the fifth so what's the third of B flat D you know one knee and you can do things like or and two E and this is more authentic i think to reggae one knee and two E the earlier one was more dancy reggae the which sounded like you're getting a little threshy over there but now something a bit more authentic so i think at least one more old school still swinging now we have a lot of the chord tones okay let one knee and two E and E and in the left so basically what we were doing in the right hand has now come to the left hand another interesting thing you could do to create a reggae bass groove something a bit more traditional would sound like so let's break that down one knee and two E and a three E and a four E and a one knee and a two E and a three E and a four E and then so that's one five three one octave in terms of the chord degrees so let's bring that together in the right hand which is playing the usual and we've done this earlier right and and no need of anders and all that just let's focus on the left um minor back to the loop don't miss the pulse and don't miss the swing and the two and the three and the four and the one right so i'll play you the right hand arpeggio pattern and then show you with some left hand incrementation so pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa so one knee and a two E and a you can also block it with arpeggios in fact just that sounds reggae to me the bass can just provide some bass support you can just do the roots but don't just hold it maybe comp it or alternate it with the fifth there we go start slow and then gradually move forward right but even at the end of this lesson if you've got that swing feel if you can get that and if you've got the left hand to kind of do the ones give up the two alternate beats and then slowly sneak in the ghost of the E that itself should be a great start i've just given you a few more just to help you maybe equip you with the tools to maybe punch above your weight so to speak right guys so we've covered a few reggae patterns hope you found the lesson useful get out your bob miley playlist and start playing along right now and don't forget to get yourselves the notation with the patterns we've put it out there and my hand written notes that would help supplement your learning cheers catch you in the next one and don't forget to hit that subscribe and turn on the bell icon for regular notifications