Ska Guitar Techniques

Somewhere between punk and reggae, there is a genre. This style fuses the fast edge of punk with the groove and melody of reggae. This is ska.

Ska guitar is a fun, exciting, and above all extremely simple style of music. The signature ska sound is extremely upbeat, the kind of music that makes you want to move your head.

Ska is that one musical style who is like the cheery, goofy, feel good, always makes you smile aunt or uncle.

So how exactly do you play ska?

Ska, believe it or not, is all in the picking hand. The signature ska feel is achieved through rests. The ska mute is a quick, short mute which cuts the note just shy. Unlike staccato notes, the grooves in ska aren’t shortened note lengths, simply short notes separated by short rests.

So how do you achieve the ska mute?

Ska muting can be a bit tricky. While at its core a fairly simple form of music, just like anything else, ska has its slightly less simple aspects. Ska muting as achieved through a mixture of palm muting and resting. When you play a chord, such as a G Major barred chord, normally to rest you would simply choke off the chord by releasing the pressure of your fretting hand.

If you were to do this in ska rhythm playing, you would have a jumbled mess. The key is to keep your picking hand a half of an inch above the strings. Between each C Major you would simply touch down with your palm and silence the strings.

This may sound simple, and it is, but you also need to be sure you are actually muting the strings, not just muffling them. The reason that I said the ska muting technique is a cross between the palm mute and a rest is because the ska mute employs the palm muting technique without actually hitting a note; you are simply palm muting silence.

Another ska guitar technique crucial to this genre of music is inverting and simplifying chords. Using our previously mentioned G Major barred chord let’s make a simplified inverted chord. A G Major barred chord consists of the notes G, D, G, B, D, and G. Playing this chord, we would bar our forefinger across all of the strings on our third fret, and then play the fifth fret of our A string with our ring finger, the fifth fret of our D string with our pinky, and the fourth fret of our G string with our middle finger.

To invert and simplify this chord, we would simply need to replicate it on higher strings. To do this, we would need the notes G, B, and D. To do this, we would simply unbar the chord, and play the last three highest notes, barring the third fret of our high E and B strings with our forefinger to get the notes G and D, and then fretting the fourth fret of our G string with our middle finger to get the note B. Now we have the same chord, but with only two fingers at work.

Now that you know a few ska guitar techniques, the next step is to practice. Take your time to develop good technique and double check your work when simplifying chords, as it is easy to accidentally change chord properties. Have fun!

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