http://www.guitartricks.com: This week on the Guitar Tricks Channel we've got a lesson on Reggae and Ska/Punk style rhythm guitar. Neal's also got an exercise that can help you build finger dexterity.

Video Transcription

The sweet, sweet sounds of Jamaica. That’s our lesson of the week on reggae and also ska punk style and we’ve got your tip of the week right now. It’s the do anywhere, finger exercise. This is pretty cool so check it out. Find a flat surface like this, what you're going to do is kind of tap your fingers like your board you know you're waiting for something and you’ll notice that your fingers, at least mine anyway go from this way to this way from right to left. And try doing it the other way and see what happens. You’ll kind of get all goofy right? So that’s the trick because when you're picking guitar that’s the direction that you want to go it’s the goofy way. So just go from one side from right to the left and then back the other way kind of like this and you can do it with both hands that will help your left hand as well. And you can do it both at the same time. So that’s it, it’s really easy on the go, play it anywhere finger technique trick. This week’s lesson request is from a member of the guitartricks.com website and it’s grand slam 15 wants to know about ska rhythm he’s playing ska guitar. So I'm no reggae expert all right but I'm going to play some basics on you, hopefully get you started. I'm using the neck pick up right here to get a little fuller sound. The key is in the right hand strumming. We’ll start off by muting the strings with the left hand I’ll be using A major, D major and E major bar chords. So strum like this the downward strum is the one the upward stroke is the end so— [Demonstration] So on reggae, the accent is on the up stroke. So we’re going to mute on the down stroke and then finger the chord on the up stroke that will sound like this— [Demonstration] And they go ahead and play a little progression 1-4-5 real simple. Do it with the A major and then the D major and then the E major. So, same exercises moving the chords around a little bit like this [Demonstration] Real basic, straight forward and taking you to the 1-4-5 progression. That’s how to get started on the reggae. Also you can instead of muting with the left hand you can mute with the right hand and you’ll kind of lose that chunk sound. So if you just want to hear the up stroke note if you mute with the right hand you’ll kind of lose that chunk. So check it out— [Demonstration] Now if you notice I'm playing the upper strings right here. It’s basically just the notes taken out of the full bar chord. I'm just playing like the first—the highest three of four strings which is usually what's done in the reggae [Demo] Just like that. Moving on to ska punk. It’s pretty much the same thing but was just faster. I'm going to add a little bit of distortion. I'm going to play the C, the G, the D and the A. [Demonstration] Using a little more of the full chord to get that more raw rock power and energy mixed in there with it. so that’s our lesson for the week right here also to tie with this lesson, we have a lesson on right hand technique you can see on the YouTube page and that will help you more with getting that up stroke groove, rhythm going. Feel free to come on down and leave us your request for a lesson on the website on the YouTube channel on the MySpace channel. You can also come on over to guitartricks.com/channel and leave a request in our form. See you next week, have a great week everyday.