– Hey everybody this is Rob
from The Quest For Groove. And in this video I'm gonna teach you how to play Reggae on a pad controller. Okay, let's start off with
a little demonstration. (reggae music) Alright so, the backing track
that I played the demo on, I've made that available
for you guys to download, and I've made four versions. One with a metronome on every beat, like tick tick, fast one. And one metronome half time,
one metronome half time on the after beat which means that it's together with the guitar. And one without a metronome all together, it just counts off and
then there's no metronome. So there's four jam
tracks that you can use to play along to when you're
practicing this Reggae groove. Okay so before we get to
the actual Reggae beat there's a little exercise
that you have to do as a little preliminary work. Turn off the sound of your pad controller, just no sound at all, just take two pads doesn't matter which ones. And you have to be able to do this, so you count to four,
one, two, three, four, and then you play a little
swing feel with your left hand.
So one a two a three a four,
a one a two a three a four. From that pattern you have to move into a triplet feel between your two hands. And that sounds something like this, one a two a three a four,
a one triplet two triplet three triplet four triplet,
one a two a three a four, a one triplet two triplet
three triplet four triplet one. So what happens if you make this switch the one two three four just keeps going, but instead of playing one two three four with just your right hand, you switch from left to right between the beats, one triplet two triplet three
triplet four triplet one.
Okay so if you turn on the sound and you would do this
on your hi-hats right? You get one two, four (drumming). Something like that, right? Okay so once you're comfortable with that, you can move on to placing different accents on the two patterns. So the main pattern (drumming), actually has an accent on the four-ee. So one a two three four-ee,
one two three four-ee And you can also give that a little extra by actually playing the four-ee (drumming) on the open hi-hat. One two three four, one two three four, one two three four, a one
two three four, a one.
And the triplet pattern actually has accents on every left hand note. So, a one two three
four, one two three four, one two three four,
one two three four one. Those are the two accents of the pattern. And once you've got that down, you can move on to playing the real beat. And the only thing you have to do is add a few fingers here and there, but you've got the basics,
you've got them down already.
You start with the first
hi-hat pattern (drumming), and then on the three you hit the hi-hat, the sidestick, and the
kick at the same time. So one two three four,
a one two three four, a one two three four, a
one two three four a one. So, from the main pattern we're gonna briefly switch to that triplet field. And we're not gonna play the entire bar, I never do that, you just
play the first two beats. So one two three, and there the
normal pattern starts again. So one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four,
one two three four one. Now you've basically got
the entire pattern down. So what you can do when
switching to the triplet pattern, you can, instead of switching to a hi-hat you can switch to a (drums) sidestick, and that sounds something like this, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four.
Something like that, right? A little thing you can do now, is you can leave out the
one, you know the one drops, famous thing in Reggae music. So after switching to that triplet thing, you leave the one completely empty, you don't play anything, like this, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two
three four, one two three.
And you can also do this without
switching to the triplet, you can also go, one two three four, one two three four, one two
three four, one two three. Right, it's fine just leaving out the one actually makes the whole
thing sound super Reggae-like. Alright so what we've got now
is the basic Reggae groove, (drumming) switching to the triplets (drumming) and then leaving out the one. We're almost there, one
extra thing you can do is hit a crash on the four (drums), that's also super Reggae style.
So you go like, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two
three four, one two three. By the way, don't do
this all the time right? If you play Reggae you have to
kind of cool it a little bit. Don't go in crash on every four, and play the triplet switch
every bar or something. This is just to demonstrate
how to play Reggae., but you know you can
also just cruise along for half a minute before
doing one of these tricks that I'm explaining to you right now.
Okay so the final thing for
hardcore finger drummers, is this feel (drumming) that one. That's quite a difficult one, and I'm gonna try and explain it to you. The first thing you have to do is make sure you set up your snare (drums) to a shallow rimshot,
this thing (drumming), both snare pads. That's this typical Reggae thing right, if you do a little roll (drumming) it's really this Reggae sound, it doesn't work with a normal snare. Okay, the first thing you
do when learning this feel, is turn off the sound
and get a little grasp on the the underlying rhythmic
structure of this feel.
So you just take two
pads and you play this, one two three four,
one two three four, one Just like in the beginning. And then, what we're gonna do, is we're gonna double
tap with our left hand, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two
three four, one two three four. Right, one and a dun dun, (humming) Let me demonstrate what that
sounds like, with sound. (drumming) One two three four, one two three four. Kind of like that. And now we're gonna divide
this across different pads. One two three four, one (drumming). That's the pattern, so
(drumming), becomes (drumming). And there you have it. (drumming) See, so if you speed that
up it sounds really awesome. (drumming) Okay so when you're practicing all this, keep in mind that learning to play Reggae is not easy and you
should really invest time in every step of the process. So when you're not able
to do the first thing that I explained, just
switching from a swing feel into a triplet feel, when you're
not capable of doing that, then you have to work on
that first before moving on, because the Reggae groove
will just not sound right if you're not capable of doing that.
And there's no shame in spending a few weeks on every step of the process. Alright, good luck practicing, and I hope to see you
again next week, bye..