Reggae

Reggae

1. ska

   • off-beat chords played by the rhythm section
     • similar to reggae but at double the tempo
   • often featured horn sections playing instrumental tunes, like the swing bands from America
   • by the late 60s, the beat slowed down and went through the brief rocksteady period becoming the reggae stye
   • the first sound of this genre to emerge
   • ska revival
     • in the UK in the late 70s
     • produced bands like The specials, The Beat, Madness
     • ska based tunes with punk-like energy

2. roots reggae

   • used political, social and Rastafarian themes
   • dominated the 70s with artists like Burning Spear, Culture...

3. dub

   • dub instrumentals were used for the DJs to 'toast' on
     • dub instrumentals were stripped down to just drum and bass - this was done by simply muting the other tracks on the mixing desk
   • snare or sidestick with splashes of heavy reverb
     • spring or plate reverb in the 60s/70s
   • dropping instruments and vocals in and out with added tape delay
     • using a high feedback level meaning many repeats
   • timed delay on snare, piano/guitar chops or the hi-hats
   • large amounts of reverb to place instruments far away in the mix
   • instruments allowed to 'leak' into the reverb send so there is no dry signal, only effected sound
   • EQ sweeps - manually changing the frequency of a boosted EQ
   • dub producers
     • Lee "scratch" Perry

4. Dancehall/ragga

   • emerged in the late 80s
   • used electronic sounds
   • lyrics had more aggressive themes than the 'concious' themes of earlier styles

5. 1950s-present day

6. instrumentation

   • vocals
     • often three-part or four-part BVs
   • drums, bass, percussion, electric guitar (often more than one)
   • piano, organ, synthesisers, horn section

7. main artists

   • the skatalites
   • bob marley & the wailers
   • alton ellis
   • dennis brown
   • jimmy cliff

8. influences

   • blues
   • R&B
   • gospel
   • soul

9. from jamaica

   • the music industry started recording local artists to play on sound systems

10. MCs would 'toast' the crowd using a mic which evolved into lyrical chanting - were also known as DJs

11. studios operated similarly to the Motown and Stax approach, with pools of songwriters to write for many different artists

12. production

    • heavy bass
      • lots of low frequency content, heavily compressed and prominent in the mix
    • drums
      • recorded with lots of isolation
      • treated with gates and compression
      • overall wanted to achieve a separated punchy sound
    • EQ used to remove low frequencies from the piano and guitar chops
      • makes them sound thinner (the piano often sounded unnaturally thinner)
    • organ shuffle usually mixed fairly quietly - sometimes is hard to even hear the left hand part
    • the sparseness of the playing left lots of room for additional guitars and keyboards
    • vocals and horns mixed with lots of clarity
    • plenty of reverb used to give a sense of space to the dry, close-miked track recordings