Reggae Songwriting Tips

photo from Scumfrog

Today I’m going to discuss a few tips for injecting some reggae-style grooves into your songwriting.  I have yet to find a music lover who dislikes reggae music.  It’s laid-back yet funky nature makes for a universally appreciated style.  There’s something in reggae for everyone:  Meaningful lyrics, interesting drum patterns, soul moving chords, and memorable melodies.

The Reggae Drum Beat

It’s all about the back-beat / up-beat / skank, whatever you want to call it.  It’s that thing that turns the strait-ahead rock beat upside down.  It’s the groove that pulls the listeners head back and forth without intention.  There are a variety of reggae-style drum beats, but they’re generally based around a back-beat groove.

While your basic 4/4 rock drum beat is consists of a kick on beat 1, snare on beat 3, and hats or rides on all 4, the reggae drum beat is usually characterized by a kick on beats 2 and 4.  Sometimes the snare will be accompanied by a simultaneous kick, to give it more of a punch.  These hits on the 2 and 4 set the overall theme of the groove by providing a deep back-beat.  Check out the video at the end of this article for a reggae drum beat demo.

Sprinkled within this back-beat pattern or short stabs on the up-beat of every beat.  These stabs are usually covered by the high-hats, but also driven by guitars and keyboard chords.  When it’s all put together, we have hi-hat/guitar stabs on the “and” of each beat (1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and), along with the drum hits on the downbeat of 2 and 4.  This gives you a deeply layered back-beat reggae groove.

The Reggae Low End

Bass lines are hugely important in reggae music.  They often accompany the beat with a deep but very definitive repeating bass line.  This may or may not match the back-beat pattern, but it is very melodic and locks right in with the chord progression.

Chords and Melodies

The goal here is to keep things simple.  Chord progressions usually consist of 2, 3, and sometimes 4 different chords.  They often incorporate a combination of major and minor keys (depending on the song), and may involve some jazzier chord voicings such as minor 7ths.

The high end of the chords on guitar and keyboards are generally played as the up-beat stabs (as described above).  These usually consist of the highest two or three notes of a chord, and cut right through your mix.  There shouldn’t be any mistake about this being a reggae style song when you hear the guitar stabs.

A great reggea melody is usually super-simple with a memorable pattern of notes.  Choose your notes wisely and use only the ones which serve your song in the best way possible.  Strip out the ones that aren’t totally essential for getting your message and emotion across.

Here’s one of my all-time favorite reggae songs, “Natural Mysic” by the great Bob Marley.

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Mixing Reggae With Other Styles

The rock – reggae mix is a popular one.  In these situations, the guitars, bass, and lyric melodies are similar to a traditional reggae song, but the drum beat takes more of a strait ahead approach, or even a hip-hop direction.

This style of mixing reggae, rock, punk and hiphop was very apparent in the music of Sublime. Check out the song “54 46″ off their album, 40oz to Freedom.

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A few Reggae-style ideas for Your Songs

Another common thread in reggae songwriting is the use of light muted guitar riffs.  These are fast and rhythmic in nature, and often played with palm mute on a clean electric guitar sound.  In production, a cool idea is double up these reggae guitar riffs (record them twice, exactly the same), then pan each hard left and right.  That gives you that wide and punchy sound without getting too aggressive with the guitar playing technique or distorting the tone.

Getting back to the drum part for a second… Another cool idea for a reggae style drum fill or accent is to add a cymble and snare hit on the final 8th note of the final measure of a phrase.  This is done beautifully in the song, “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” by Stevie Wonder.  Check it out:

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Reggae Resources

Reggae Wikipedia Page – in-depth history and other info

Reggae Drumming Demonstrations on YouTube.  This series has lots of great demos with a variety of reggae styles.

Related posts:

1. Tips for Writing Political Songs
2. 10 Tips For Composing Music for Picture Tracks That Sell

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