Characteristics
Rocksteady uses some of the musical elements of rhythm and blues (R&B), jazz, ska, African and Latin American drumming, and other genres. One of the most easily recognizable elements, as in ska, are offbeat rhythms; staccato chords played by a guitar and piano on the offbeats of the measure. This offbeat can be counted so that it falls between each count as an "and". Example: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and etc. The perceived tempo became slower with the development of rocksteady than it had been in ska and this led to a number of changes in the music. The guitar and piano players began to experiment with occasional accents around the basic offbeat pattern. This can be heard throughout Jamaican recordings in subsequent years.
The fact that chording instruments (instruments that play chords) in ska, rocksteady and reggae often play so infrequently in the bar and play repeated rhythmic patterns led Jamaican musicians to explore simple modal chord progressions such as I - VII or I - IV. The latter here being essentially a Plagal cadence that serves to outline the key. The fact that jazz played an influence in the musical developments in Jamaican music is evidenced by the frequent covers and interpolations of popular jazz songs throughout Jamaica's recorded history. It could be argued that the development of modal jazz in the late 1950s and early 1960s also influenced the choice of Jamaican players to explore simpler modal chord patterns. Either way, simple chord progressions became a characteristic of Jamaican music. It is important to note that while much of what is internationally popular in Jamaican music uses simpler chord progressions, Jamaican musicians have continued to use every kind of cadence and progression that can be found in other modern popular genres.
Rocksteady, even more so than its predecessor ska and the early reggae that followed, was built around the "one drop" drum beat, characterized by a heavy accent on the second and fourth beat of every bar (or the third beat if you count in double time), played by the bass drum and the snare together. The snare drum often plays a side stick "click" rather that a full snare hit; an influence from Latin music.
This differs markedly from the drumming styles in R&B and rock and roll, which put the bass drum on the first beat (the downbeat) and almost never on the second and fourth beats (the weak beats in a bar). Jamaican musicians sometimes refer to the second and fourth beats as the "afterbeat". All the Jamaican styles of kit drumming since ska have incorporated a mixture of influences, including African "burru" percussion, American jazz and R&B, and Latin rhythms. The slowing in perceived tempo that occurred with rocksteady opened the door for drummers to explore these influences more, eventually leading to all the patterns used in modern Jamaican music and reggae as it is recorded throughout the world.
This slowing that occurred with rocksteady allowed bass players to explore more broken, syncopated figures, playing a counterpoint to the repetitive rhythm of the guitar and keyboards and this new style eventually largely replaced the walking patterns that had been so characteristic of many ska recordings. These new patterns fit very well with the simpler modal chord progressions often used by Jamaican players. CBS bought Fender Musical Instruments in 1965, this led to cheaper electric basses being available to Jamaican musicians. Byron Lee was the first ska band leader to have a full time electric bass. By 1966, the advantages of recording and performing with electric bass had meant most players made the switch to electric. A number of factors led to smaller band sizes and this in turn led to changes in the way the music was composed and arranged. The slower tempo and smaller band sizes in turn led to a much larger focus on the bass line in general, which eventually became one of the most recognizable characteristics of Jamaican music. In rocksteady, the lead guitar often doubles the bass line, in the muted picking style perfected by Lynn Taitt, a technique that continued on into reggae.
Smaller band sizes and slower tempos also led to a number of changes in the way horn parts were written and arranged. Whereas, in ska, the horn section had often spent much of the song playing the offbeats with the guitar and piano, in rocksteady they favored repeated rhythmic patterns or simply sitting out all together until the lead line.
Rocksteady and reggae are perhaps best thought of and notated as a half time feel, in which case one would count at twice the tempo. This would mean the guitar/piano offbeats would fall on beats 2 and 4. And the "one drop" of the snare/kick drum would fall on beat 3. This also allows us, when transcribing the music, to use the term "swing 8ths" to help notate hi-hat patterns, for example.
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