LeftyBassist.com

Is anyone else into Reggae bass? Over the past 5 years I somewhat got to specialize in it. For awhile I toured with a cool band and I am recording a Reggae album now. I grew to love how the bass totally drives the music. Even if you are not playing a lot of notes, you really carry the band as a bass player and I love "elasticity" of the groove due the push/pull effect with the drummer (I you want me to eleborate here and if anyone is interested: Sting pretends that he got sick of playing with Stewart Copeland because he could not do the push/pull stuff i.e The bass pushing the beat, playing on top and the drummer holding the groove without acclerating but playing slightly behind. Sting complained that Copeland was always speeding up).

I was just wondering if I was the only one here.

I love reggae, ska and dancehall but aside from a few songs here and there I have not played it to a great degree.
Funny thing is I was listening to "Kaya" the other day (one of my favorite albums of all time) and thinking that I really want to delve deeply into those styles from the playing side and become as adept at it as I can, kind of a "New Year resolution" in a way.

I love reggae, especially live. I don't really get to play it, but I do have an anecdote to share. I am overall still in the learning phases of playing the instrument, and almost three years ago I was being introduced to sycopation by my teacher, who thought my timing was awful, especially on a lot of the straight ahead rock and keeping count. He then put on some Bob Marley, and it came to me instantly. We put on a couple of other Marley songs that I had not heard, and it just came to me, I would get the rhythm right on. Then we put on some salsa and merengue and it came to me quite easily. We then went back to blues...and it was ugly.

Anyhow, I have just found that the Carribean beats come very easily to me for some odd reason. Love the stuff.

Makes me think that I should write some reggae for church and then play it there. That would get a reaction from folks used to listening to CCM

I've always been more of a Ska fan than Reggae, but I do love listening and playing both. (I was very surprised to discover that Ska predates Reggae, since I never knew the history and grew up listening to the early 80's ska bands like the Specials, The Selecter, English Beat, etc and equated it with a more modern aggressive style). My first band in high school was ska/reggae, and my last original band dabbled in occasional reggae grooves and opened for some ska bands, most notably the English Beat (aside note: I own one of Dave Wakeling's guitars). If ever there was proof in the, "Less is more" approach, it's the power of bass in reggae music.

And Sting's right. Copeland DOES speed up!