Emergency ska advice

Stuckfast

I'm depping in a ska band tomorrow night. I have never played a ska tune in my life. I'll have a Strat and a small amp, I suppose I could also bring a Tele. Anything I should know? Is there a ska tone and if so how do I get it?

mudslide73

Paging @EricTheWeary ;

thecolourbox

I'm not sure it's the gig for you given you've never played that music before?

Stuckfast

No it probably isn't, but I'm doing it as a favour and it's unpaid.

EricTheWeary

Well probably @skaguitar and @Placidcasual79 and @Tuscan777 more so. 

It’s mostly clean, maybe a bit of reverb. The rhythm parts are clean and you need to get the muting right so you get nice distinction between playing the chords and the mutes inbetween. There are slightly different approaches depending on whether it’s classic 60s, 2 Tone or 3rd Wave  but mostly it’s small chords ( 3 or 4 note versions of major and minor chords, probably rarely use any more extended harmonies) and using the basic eighth note ska rhythm. Avoid open chords, if you use standard barre chords that’s fine but you’ll only really be hitting the thinnest four strings.
 The word ‘ska’ is said to come from the sound of the guitar. It’s often doubling what the keyboard player is doing so that might help. 

If you count a bar of 4/4 as ‘one and two and three and four and’ you hear the chord on the ands and a muted strum on the numbers. You don’t want to really clank the muted parts, just a light touch. Ideally your fretboard hand should be releasing tension to mute the chords whilst holding the shape so it’s nice and sharp. 

You can throw in a slide from a fret below into a chord sometimes, thats quite common. 

Ideally for the 60s stuff you’d use a more early reggae style approach where it’s all down strokes. But lots of people don’t and use up strokes for the chords and at faster tempos it’s not really workable to stick with all down strokes or at least harder to hear the difference. If this is a bit confusing you can probably ignore it and just do what feels comfortable. 

Often there’s a second guitar in ska and this tended to be my role. Fairly standard fills and short solos. You can also play damped  parts where you are doubling the bass line or ‘rattle’ style parts where it’s an alternate dampened part on the low strings usually based on arpeggios.

You could use delay for some dubbier elements. There’s some of this in The Specials and Madness so used sparingly that can work. Chorus or flanger used lightly can sweeten up rhythm parts and you’ll hear that in bands like The Beat. I think they had short delays sometime as well but they were listening to Afro pop a lot by then. 

For solos I’d use a bit of distortion just to add a bit of sustain and dynamic. There are some distorted parts in Madness and old school artists like Toots and the Maytalls will have quite bluesy distorted guitar for their solos live. 

The singer in my band did most of our rhythm parts and he wasn’t 100% rock solid whilst singing at the same time. However, if he lost the chord progression he’d just keep ploughing on with a hard muted strum and we didn’t always notice. 

But that 8th note ska rhythm and a guitar plugged into an amp should probably get you through the dep gig. 

skaguitar

Everything @EricTheWeary said ... plus whether you use the strat or tele play on the neck pick up..it'll sound better. Amp with a bit of reverb and bass and treble dialled in around equal. You need a really clean sound so if you're in a big venue with a small amp or you need to turn the amp up to be heard, you don't want it breaking up at all, so if you can, mic it up .
The ska sound is short sharp chops on the chords with no ringing out. Usual patterns are the 1 4 and 5 chord progression.

have fun

blobb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f73TICkFKE

Stuckfast

Ace, thanks everyone. The material seems pretty straightforward, I just need to get my head around the off-beat thing.

EricTheWeary

@stuckfast how did it go? 

Stuckfast

I quite enjoyed it in the end, and I don't think I stuffed anything up too badly. Wish I'd taken a louder amp though, I was standing right next to it and couldn't hear myself for the second half of the set.

skaguitar

@Stuckfast who did you play for..? Glad you enjoyed it...it is fun music to play

BintyTwanger77

I play alto sax in a ska/2Tone covers band. For guitar tone, usually simplest is best: our guitarist/lead singer uses a Tele on bridge pickup or both into a Princeton, very clean, little bit of spring reverb, clean boost for solos, no delay, mostly synchopated chords strummed on the upstroke.

What kind of ska do you play? Is it original (Toots, Desmond Dekker, The Upsetters), 2nd wave (Specials, The Selecter), or 3rd wave (Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Buck-O-Nine)?

Stuckfast

It ended up being pretty much a pick-up band so the pressure was off, I wasn't the only debutant. Seemed like a mix of original and second wave stuff to me but I know little about it...

EricTheWeary

Stuckfast said:

It ended up being pretty much a pick-up band so the pressure was off, I wasn't the only debutant. Seemed like a mix of original and second wave stuff to me but I know little about it...

That sounds like a fairly typical ska covers band, the third wave stuff is a bit of a different kettle of fish. Bands like The Selecter and The Specials covered lots of 60s songs anyway so there are some very blurred lines. 

I'm off to see The Specials in Coventry in July, I'll keep a plectrum in my pocket in case they need a last minute dep. 

Grunfeld

Stuckfast said:

Anything I should know?

  Bounce!

The Interrupters -- "She's Kerosene"

EricTheWeary

Grunfeld said:

Stuckfast said:

Anything I should know?

  Bounce!

The Interrupters -- "She's Kerosene"

Off my album of the year 2018. The one for 2019 will be The Specials.
The apple don’t fall far from the tree...

AlexO

Grunfeld said:

Stuckfast said:

Anything I should know?

  Bounce!

The Interrupters -- "She's Kerosene"

I've never heard of them or that song but they have a new fan now. Fantastic stuff!

skaguitar

The Interrupters are doing a small uk tour early next year...will be worth a look I think..

EricTheWeary

skaguitar said:

The Interrupters are doing a small uk tour early next year...will be worth a look I think..

https://i.imgur.com/9iVM9vZ.jpg

Announced in the last couple of days. I’d have to admit the 02 Institute on a Tuesday in January isn’t a super thrilling prospect. Hmm. 

JerkMoans

Based on that song/vid, The Interrupters freaking RULE