Fight "reggae" on the guitar

When playing the accompaniment on the guitar, you can use different patterns of striking, suitable for a particular time signature, corresponding to a certain style of melody or song, logically corresponding to the rhythmic structure of a piece of music, and also depending on the playing level of the guitarist. The popular reggae battle has many variations, and even novice musicians can learn some simple schemes of this accompaniment.

Reggae guitar fighting became popular in the 70s of the last century, and its roots come from African national rhythms. Its main feature is the unusual accents for the 4/4 time signature, falling on the weak beats - the second and fourth. The strong first lobe and the relatively strong third are either muffled or paused.

Thanks to muffling, percussion and emphasizing low beats, very interesting accompaniments are obtained, used not only in reggae music, but also in other modern styles. It should be noted separately that the variations of this battle, one might say, are uncountable. The main thing that should be present is the accentuation of the weak beats and the muffling of the strong ones. In addition, those chords that should sound are played sharply and clearly, without delaying their durations (staccato).

To start studying the options for reggae fighting, you must first master the basic techniques of playing the accompaniment on the guitar, learn chords, including using the barre, and learn how to quickly rearrange them. And also you need:

• be able to play chords with a variable stroke (P-V-P-V and so on) under the count: “one and, two and, three and, four and” with the help of a pick or strokes of the thumb, forefinger or other fingers of the right hand;
• to work out the techniques of muffling sounding strings with the edge of the palm and the thumb of the right hand;
• learn to muffle the sounds of the played chords with a barre by weakening the pressing of the strings;
• practice some percussion techniques.

Among the percussion aids for beginners, the following can be recommended:

• a sharp blow with a thumb on the bass strings by a rotational movement of the right hand - imitates double cymbals of a drum kit ("hi-hat");
• hitting the strings with the edge of the palm of your right hand immediately after playing the chord - you get a clear click, also often similar to the sound of double cymbals;
• strike with the middle or ring finger of the right hand on the top of the guitar in the area between the socket and the saddle - imitates a drummer's snare drum ("snair").

For a guitarist starting his journey in mastering the skill of playing the acoustic guitar, these techniques will be enough to move on to learning the reggae fighting options of intermediate difficulty. In the next section, there are a few patterns of this fight that you should tackle first.

To practice the technique of playing the reggae battle, you should learn the chord progression in the key of D minor. These chords are shown below on conditional diagrams, which are often used to denote guitar chords in educational and song literature:

All chords use the barre technique, which means that the index finger of the left hand presses all the strings on the desired frets of the guitar neck. The barre technique is indicated by the letter “B” with a Roman numeral next to it (III or V), which denotes the fret on which the strings are pressed when playing a particular chord. The chords are labeled under the corresponding left-hand fingerprinting pattern. Arabic numerals (2, 3, 4) indicate the fingers of the left hand, column numbers (from 1 to 6) are the numbers of the guitar strings. The vertical bars crossing the horizontal bars (strings) are frets on the fretboard.

The chord sequence is as follows: Dm-Gm-A-F. The time signature is 4/4.

After learning harmony, you need to take the first - not very difficult - reggae battle and start working with it. Here is its diagram:

The learning plan will be as follows.

1. At first, it is worth practicing the fight purely in order to memorize the rhythm itself. At this stage, beginners should not think about other nuances: staccato, jamming or accent (the latter is completely superfluous here, since there are no chord extractions on the other beats - neither the first nor the third).
2. After automatically memorizing the battle, you can proceed to hone the nuances. In this case, on the second beat, chords should be played abruptly (staccato) by lifting the index finger of the left hand playing the barre and other fingers participating in the chord literally 1-2 mm from the neck, without removing from the strings. No more actions should be taken at this stage (meaning novice musicians).
3. In conclusion, it is necessary in the second half of the fourth beat (at the expense of "and") perform a blow on 3-4 strings from the bottom up (starting from string number 1) and immediately muffle their sound, placing the edge of the palm on them from the side of the little finger. At the same moment, the strings are muffled with the fingers of the left hand due to the weakening of the force of their pressing according to the method of the previous paragraph. On the count of “four,” no additional actions, except for hitting the strings down, are required, since at a high tempo the sound of the chord on this beat continues for a short time.

A little later, on the second beat, the beat can also be muffled in both ways at once: by removing sounds by raising the fingers of the left hand, and by placing your palm on the strings. In this case, no extraneous sounds are guaranteed to appear after double muffling.

To consolidate the material, it will be useful to disassemble and learn another interesting version of the reggae battle, the diagram of which is presented below:

This battle is expressed by a chord accent on the second and fourth beats of a measure, which undoubtedly refers it to the classic form of reggae, and in addition to the accents, a simple ascending step of the same chord on the first and third beats serves as an addition to the accents. This type of fight can be played with both a pick and fingers. To muffle the sounds of the chord, it is also better to use the same double method discussed in the analysis of the first variant of the fight. When learning chords, you need to play them using the barre technique: the first chord is taken in the fifth position (barre on the 5th fret), the second in the third (barre on the third fret).

And with the third option of the described battle, it is recommended to try to figure it out on your own. Here's this option:

It should only be noted that the bass sound for the first beat in each measure is played with the right thumb for those guitarists who do not play with a pick.