Something new to do.

I think I'm going to buy an electric guitar and learn how to play reggae music.

Other than the cultural omnipresence of rock 'n' roll there are two genres of music that have consistently held my attention over the years, Irish folk music and reggae.  Irish music takes me to an idealized version of home, all rambles in the countryside and jolly pubs.  Reggae takes me away to sun bathed palm trees and a hammock, with a complete lack of hurry.

I've given the Irish music a solid try and I would say it has been success, but I am stagnating.  Essentially what I do is play the same thirty songs that I have learned, and even the ones I cannot properly play I don't practice enough to really improve.  This is OK, in the genre my best instrument is my voice, and I have found that once you know a song you can go months without playing it and generally do just fine when you come back to it.  At some point it seems likely that I will play an Irish ban again.

So, on to reggae.  The internet is a wonderful thing, you can get free lessons on almost everything and I have had a peak at some of them.  As with many things it seems remarkably simple with basically three ingredients, but it will be a challenge to learn (which is probably what I need).  Ingredient one is the ability to play barre chords, the ones where your index finger covers all the strings, the type of chord (major,minor etc.) comes from the shape of the other fingers, and the pitch comes from moving that shape up and down the neck.  Ingredient two is the ability to pull off the strings with the left hand quickly, but not enough to take your fingers off the strings completely.  The third is the ability to keep the rhythm while playing only on the backbeat.

I can play some barre chords on an acoustic guitar so I should manage this area relatively quickly (although some of the chords used are pretty weird).  I have been trying the pull off thing with my acoustic guitar, and can basically do it, and an acoustic guitar is more difficult for this.  The tricky thing is going be the last bit.

I'm a white guy from Europe.  I keep time on the one and the three. ONE two THREE four.  Black guys from Africa keep time on the two and the four, the backbeat.  one TWO three FOUR.  The melody is the same in both cases but the emphasis in the rhythm is different.  Incidentally, this is a big part of why rock/blues/country music is popular, it has both rhythms, white rhythm on the big bass drum (BOOM) and black rhythm on the snare drum (THWACK).  The beat of rock is BOOM THWACK BOOM THWACK. 

Reggae is a very stripped down version of the African beat, the guitar (and sometimes keyboard) keeping the rhythm by just playing a chord on that beat, and the pull-off technique keeps that chord very short.  This is very different than the almost constant strumming common in most European music. 

So, all I have to do is go, "chucka chucka chucka chucka" nice and slowly and sing over the top.  It's just that for the first month or two each "chucka" will seem to be in exactly the wrong place.

One of my whimsical dreams has been to form a band that combines reggae and Irish folk, either by putting that reggae backbeat on Irish tunes, or by simply playing one set of Irish music and then everyone changes outfits and instruments and plays a reggae set.