Play Reggae Bass: A Beginner’s Guide

What Do You Need To Know To Play Reggae Bass?

There is huge variety in Reggae bass lines, but at the same time there are characteristic elements that need to be there in order for the bass line to sound right. In this article I am going to show you fundamental techniques that can help you to compose your own Reggae bass lines that sound authentic.

Here are six fundamental techniques that I have taken from classic Reggae bass lines:

1. Leaving beat one empty (One-drop rhythm)

2. Using space in your bass lines

3. Mixing up straight and swing feels

4. Using ‘question and answer’ in your lines

5. Interweaving your bass part with the drum part

6. Starting on notes other than the root note

Reggae bass lines are very often syncopated, which means that beats are emphasised that would usually be the weak beats of the bar, for example the ‘one-drop rhythm’ is used a lot in Reggae. This term was invented by Carlton Barrett of Bob Marley And The Wailers, and it literally means to leave beat one empty. Usually beat one is a strong beat, and missing it out leads to a feeling of displacement in the rhythm.  

Four Reggae Grooves

I will now show you four grooves that will help illustrate these six fundamental techniques.

The first two grooves use the following chord progression:

Progression 1

||: A                       | A                        | Dm                        | Em                       :||

 Groove 1

Technique 1

If you look in bar 1, you can see that there is a rest on beat one, reinforcing the ‘one-drop’ feel that you can hear in the first backing track as there is nothing on beat one. This is a characteristic technique that you can use in your own Reggae bass lines.

This is not always the case in Reggae though, so when composing your own lines, first listen first to the drum beat to hear if there are drums on beat one or not.

The ‘backbeat’ in Reggae refers to a heavily emphasised beat three of every bar. This is very common and different to the usual backbeat on beats two and four that you would find in pop music

Technique 2

Another thing that you might notice about Groove 1 is that there is a lot of space. This is important in Reggae, and makes the notes you play more powerful.

Technique 3

One element of this groove that you can not see in the notation is that you play this bass line with a swing feel. This mirrors the swing feel in the drums from the backing track. Reggae bass often mixes up the straight and swing feel, and later on I will show you a groove that has both feels.

If you look at the chord progression, you might notice that the bass line of Groove 1 does not online the D minor chord in the 3rd and 7th bar. In Reggae, you can set up a groove that is mainly based on the root chord, which is ‘A’ in this case. This becomes a sort of ‘pedal groove’ which means it stays on one chord.

 Groove 2

This groove is over the same chord progression as Groove 1, and this time the D minor chord gets emphasised a lot more. You can see clear movement from the A chord to the D minor chord and then to the E minor chord.

Technique 4

The fourth technique I want to point out is the use of ‘question and answer’ in the bass line. This is a great way to structure your own lines. Try to ask a question in the first two bars and then answer it in the next two bars. You can do this by the way that you shape your bass line. For example, you can play a line that ascends and then answer this with a line that descends. This creates a symmetry which sounds great as well as creating clear sections in your bass line.

Technique 5

The fifth technique I want to talk about is the syncopation that is created between the bass and drums. In pop music it is usual for the bass to follow the kick pattern (bass drum) but in Reggae, bass and drums are more likely to have separate rhythmic patterns that lock in together really nicely. 

So when you are creating your own Reggae lines, do not worry about matching the bass drum part like you usually would when playing other styles of music.

The next two grooves use the following chord progression:

Progression 2

||: G                       | G                      | Am                      | Am                     :||

The second backing track is at a faster tempo than the last track. The drum beat is different but it still has the strongest accent on beat three of every bar. The keys are still playing the same off-beat pattern on beats two and four. 

 Groove 3

This groove uses a lot of the techniques that I have already mentioned:

• Question and answer between the first and second bar of each pattern.

• The groove again does not start on beat one.

• There is a lot of space in the bass line.

This groove has the variation between straight and swing feel that I mentioned earlier on in the article. The first five notes of each two bar pattern are played with a straight feel and then the next three notes are played with a swing feel. This creates a really interesting rhythmic effect that is common in Reggae.

Groove 4

Technique 6

The last technique that I am going to mention is that lots of Reggae bass lines do not start on the root note, they often start on the 3rd or the 5th of the chord. This leads to a lot of the bass lines using arpeggio shapes and root-5th-octave shapes. 

• The notes in bars 1 and 2 are D, G, and B and these make up a G major arpeggio.

• The notes in bars 3 and 4 are A and E and they make up the root-5th- octave shape.