Hi everybody,

I have to build some reggae vocabulary and have non idea where to start from. Anybody could pls tell me where to get some material?

Thanks

Have you ever tried Red Stripe?

Yay, beer!

Gotta learn that one-drop, mon.

Chris' one-drop lesson for the layman:

On the hi-hat, play either a shuffle beat (triplets, but rest on every second beat of each triplet), and then play a cross-stick on the snare and a kick drum beat on the 3 of every measure.

Some reggae has less of a shuffle and more of a straight 16th beat to it, but the one-drop (the cross-stick and kick at the same time) usually remains integral.

In reggae, the downbeat is minimalized, as you usually do not play a kick drum beat on it (hard to get used to) and the upstrokes are usually emphasized. Like:

one TWO three FOUR

The most important thing in reggae (IMO) is feel. It might drive you crazy whether the right hand pattern is swung or not. Sometimes there's a swing, sometimes it's a straight beat, but most of the time it's somewhere in the vast, vast middle. I think that might have something to do with a certain traditional substance associated with reggae...

A couple other things I've learned in my (limited) experience with reggae:
Oddly enough, no ride cymbal is used
ALWAYS start the song with a timbale fill (buy bob marley's legend album and listen to the first :04 of every song)
A popular fill is to hit the snare and a crash at the same time on the last 16th note before the 4 beat.

Anyway I hope this helps and doesnt confuse you worse. I second all the music recommendations so far. Also, the Red Stripe, although it's unbelievably overpriced at every bar where I live (which is ironically the closes state to Jamaica in the US) is a good idea. I don't officially condone another aforementioned reggae-related substance, so I will only say it appears to have been conducive to the playing of (not necessarily learning of) reggae in past ocurrences.

Good luck in your reggae journey. It's probably one of the most fun beats I play.

May ery'ting be irie, mon!

I agree with you Bart, and I am lucky in that I consider myself among those who can listen to music and then visualize what the musicians are doing (most of the time anyway) and translate it to the kit (some of the time anyway  ).

But, that doesn't work as well for some people, especially when they are first exposed to a new style. I remember it took me a while to realize that the kick was being played on the 3 because that was so foreign to me and I thought the engineer may have just gotten a really deep sound out of the cross-stick. Naive, huh?

Especially with reggae, where there is so much non-drumset percussion along with the kit, it can be hard for a beginner (yea, even a novice) to discern what is coming from the drumkit and what is coming from the percussionist.

Listening is definitely the most "authentic" way to learn, but for some people it can be problematic. Take rural Mexican Norteño music for example. They sing in constant perfect parallel harmony but do you think they have all studied advanced harmonic theory? Doubtful. They are just exposed to it throughout their life and it comes naturally. But if I wanted to do that (I do, actually) and someone told me to just listen to it, I would have a hard time getting started, and I have studied advanced harmonic theory (all I could take, anyway).

I have thankfully been constantly exposed to reggae. Listening to Legend is my first musical memory from when I was 5. Whenever a song ends on that album, I can sing the timbale intro of the next song before it starts. But since I knew that album far before I knew anything about drumming, I couldn't listen to it and repeat what I heard until I learned a basic reggae beat from a more formally-educated drummer friend.

So there is much to be said for learning from listening, and far, far, far be it from me to knock what Bart is saying, because I agree with him, but it cannot hurt to have a rudimentary "on-paper" knowledge of a style before you take on the mighty task of immersing yourself in listening.

Oh yeah, I did mean to write that it was perfectly clear that you weren't knocking me. I was just elaborating a little.

Speaking of reggae, my band played a block party last weekend, and since we're an all-original band we can't play three-hour sets like most bands at those kinds of events usually play. So, running out of ideas, we played a completely unrehearsed reggae version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game." It translated well into reggae, and I got a couple compliments about it!

May I suggest Black Uruhu, some of Robbie and Sly`s best work.

Of all genres of music,I found playing reggae reasonably well was by far the most difficult to learn. It so foreign to what I learned until that point. When I first heard Stewart Copeland,Sly Dunbar and Bunny Wailer(was that his name?) playing it it used to absolutely boggle my mind- a confidence killer. I remember feeling really inadequate because I felt like I had two left feet and two left hands.

In addition to listening to CDs, I would recommend a DVD of a reggae group you like. Not that listening is not helpful but seeing and hearing is a double learning whammy. I found in listening to Bob Marley CDs it was at times difficult to hear what was happening w/bass drum patterns when bass guitar lines was prominent. There's at least a couple Marley DVDs out there -sound quality sucks but I found them really helpful.

DVDs have helped me learn new things at warp speed. I believe if you have some strong fundamentals you can take yourself up to a pro level(a good one too) within less than two years just by watching DVDs and practicing what you see and hear(ideally w/some live performing to cement your learnings).