Reggae Ukulele Strum: Reggae Ukulele Songs

Reggae is known as a fun music style. Bob Marley, a Jamaican musician, played a significant role in making it popular. While reggae seems to hear simple, playing it for beginners might appear to be tough. Playing the guitar can be difficult due to the off-beat and staccato approach.

Reggae gives you an uplifting feeling every other music style might also deliver. It becomes fantastic in summer. Maybe you plan to travel with your folks this summer and intend to play a few Bob Marley songs. An instrument you have is a ukulele.

Playing his songs might seem cumbersome because of the unusual approach used in his songs. So we’ve appeared before you with this article that will guide you to know reggae ukulele strum.

You find the correct ukulele before we begin our guide. Let’s inform you of some details about the ukulele.

The ukulele pertains to the same family as the guitar-known as the lute family. With four strings, it is familiar as a little guitar-like instrument. The nylon strings hold this instrument. Indeed, the ukulele has four fundamental types.

Hear plenty of reggae. We always say you can’t play it if you haven’t listened to it. The more familiar you become with the type, the more you’ll understand what goes on in the music—even when you might not physically make the correct tempo.

Bob Marley, one of the best, is the conspicuous name here. His career needs to be researched from start to finish.

Unless you are familiar with Bob Marley, buy the Legend album and move on from there. If you know Bob, expand your repertoire with Exodus, Survival, Kaya, and as various Masterpiece albums as possible.

So let’s look at some reggae ukulele strum techniques that will aid you in getting a reggae rhythm and playing some reggae songs.

Reggae is, indeed, a band-based song. Every instrument accomplishes a prime function and contains a distinctive sound discovered across genres.

The guitar (usually performed by the keyboardist) is the plain instrumental part we’ll copy on the ukulele. Luckily, the sound is the most significant for us. So much like reggae, reggae does not sound without the rhythm skank.

So what does a “skank” mean? The short strums in reggae music are denominated in this way that turns this music recognizable. Indeed, this music is formed around these pillars. It’s not general to play offbeat for other genres. But it does not become the case with styles like reggae and ska.

You can count it in two alternative ways:

One ‘two’ three ‘four’ or one ‘and‘ two ‘and’ three ‘and’ four ‘and.’

What you choose depends a lot on the music. You will be capable of experimenting and finding the best strumming method from the skank type that will match the song you intend to play.

Our strumming hand is doing its thing now, and your strumming (left hand) truly has some work to do. While playing reggae, you do your chords very staccato in sound (commonly familiar as chop).

We target a short, sharp blow that gets quickly muted. That’s why we are about to focus on barre chords closely (doing it with open chords using pinky muting is possible, but we will leave that for another lesson).

Barre chords provide an excellent advantage – by leaving the stress from our fretting hands, we will get muted sustainably after strumming chords.

It’s a too familiar finger technique that is significant in making reggae patterns. But it’s so simple that even newbies will enjoy learning it. So you mute the string to produce a fantastic silent sound, and, indeed, it is the technique.

To continue the Reggae Scratch Strum:

• Next to the bridge, rest your hand next to the strings, with your thumb indicating outward, aloof from the ukulele. Just ensure your hand works to mute strings because it remains on them.
• As you advance to mute the strings, utilize your 1st finger as given below.

You’ll enjoy a scratching sound.

You can do it in the following way:

• Percuss your feet evenly to retain a gentle beat: 1, 2, 3, 4, and more.
• Now enumerate 1, 2 and, 3, 4 and, observe you affix an “and” after the 2nd and 4th beats.
• Strum on these beats: 1, D U, 3, D U. You will become capable of playing a downward strum on “2” and an upward strum on “4” by the same factor as “and.”

Next, we are about to examine a double chop rhythm/strumming pattern. We have been capable of playing the beat for the reggae double chop but need to do down-up fast.

We are targeting those short, sharp strokes again that require you to leave the pressure on your fretting hand. Indeed, you will accomplish this twice – once for the up strum and once for the down strum.

Try to practice it since playing at first for beginner players might be troublesome, but this strumming pattern is extensively used in reggae music and will give your song a traditional reggae beat.

Below we present some popular Reggae ukulele songs with chords to make your reggae ukulele strum practice easy. So practice with them.

Chords: Bb, Eb, F

Although the chords don’t seem troublesome, Bob’s Hard Time becomes a better challenge for players who expect a little more.

One Love chords

Chords: C, G, Am, F

One Day, one of the strongest songs on this list, seems more of a pop song than reggae. But in my mind, Matisyahu appears like modern reggae.

One Day chords

Chords: G, C, D

Red, Red Wine is an excellent 3-chord repeat progression to practice your chanking with a gentle vibe and a bubbly message.

Red, Red Wine chords

Chords: D, G

Although “Sublime” is not heavy reggae music, it is a famous reggae band, “What I Got” sort of needs to go here. “Sublime” has two chords with some attitude.

What I Got chords

Chords: A, D, E

Three Little Birds, a legendary feel-better reggae song, is likely one of Bob Marley’s best-known compositions. You can turn E into an E7 chord for simple variation.

Three Little Birds’ chords

Reggae and Ukulele continue entirely with each other. You will find many attractive and hard reggae strumming patterns. We’ve mastered the ukulele and the techniques you need to play any reggae song.

If you already know about this genre, reggae strum on the ukulele will become simple. Strumming will come automatically to you if you master the chords once. We’ve shown a few tips in this guide on how to play the strum.

Understanding the importance of practice is the prime tip. Start practicing every day, and you’ll make what you are after. If you stick to your effort, you will achieve your goals.