Reggae music from Jamaica became popular in the 70s with musicians like Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley becoming big stars. Reggae is a laid back style of music that has a great groove for dancing. Other non-Jamaican musicians who had hits with this style of music include Eric Clapton with his cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff” and bands like The Police and UB40 playing many songs with a reggae groove.
Skank Rhythm
In a reggae band the rhythm guitar usually plays short staccato chords on the off beats or just on beats 2 and 4 of the bar. This is called a “skank” rhythm with the term “skank” coming from the name of a dance style. As these chords are on the off beat they can be played with an UP strum if you’re used to strumming DOWN on the on beat. However if you’re comfortable strumming DOWN on the off beats for these chords you can try this too.
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Listen to the audio of the reggae skank rhythm being played on a 3 string A chord. |
Muting
The chords played in reggae are often lighter then regular open string chords or bar chords used in other styles of music. For example the A D and E chords in Bob Marley’s “3 Little Birds” can be played using just the first 3 strings. Note that these chord shapes aren’t using any open strings making the notes easier to mute.
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3 Little Birds Chords | Download Listen to the audio of the 3 Little Birds Chords. |
If possible it’s also handy to mute the 4th (D) string with the edge of finger playing the 3rd (G) string to prevent the 4th string ringing out if you accidentally strum it. See how the 2nd finger below in the photo is touching the edge of the 4th string to mute when playing the A chord shape.
To get the tight rhythmic skank sound you need to mute the chords in between the strums by lightly releasing the pressure on the fretting hand.
16 Note Rhythms
Once you have this technique down you can vary the rhythm by adding quick 16th note strum to create a double strum. Here use quick DOWN/UP (marked as D & U in the music.) strumming technique. Again make sure that you mute after each double strum.
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3 Little Birds 16th Chords | Download Listen to the audio of the 3 Little Birds 16th Chords. |
Dead Strums
Another element you can add to mix up the rhythm is to add dead strums to create a percussive effect. These are written with an X in music notation. This is where you mute the strings by lightly touching them with the fretting hand. Using this technique along with the staccato chords you can create really interesting rhythmic patterns for a reggae rhythm guitar groove. The example below uses a variation of the 16th note rhythm with dead strums watch for the strumming indications.
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3 Little Birds Dead Strum Chords | Download Listen to the audio of the 3 Little Birds Dead Strum Chords. |
2 thoughts on “Reggae Rhythm Guitar”
The guitar skank is played on a downward strum, not up. You will rarely see an upward strum skank…At least not by the top level pros! It only takes seeing a few concerts to notice this.
Thanks for your input. I’ve expanded on this to make it clearer why it may be easier for some beginner’s to strum UP when initially learning this rhythm.