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Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae )〕 A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, The Maytals, The Heptones and The Paragons. The term ''rocksteady'' comes from a dance style that was mentioned in the Alton Ellis song "Rock Steady". Dances performed to rocksteady were less energetic than the earlier ska dances. The first international rocksteady hit was "Hold Me Tight" (1968) by the American soul singer Johnny Nash; it reached number one in Canada.〔(【引用サイトリンク】Library and Archives Canada ">url=http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/rpm/028020-119.01-e.php?brws_s=1&file_num=nlc008388.5802&type=1&interval=24&PHPSESSID=6mtm9de4jgrtrv7l9ujpdh7f71 )〕 ==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. 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. Rocksteady, even more so 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 one counts 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). 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. With the advent of the drum machine and computer in the 1980s, Jamaican popular music i.e. "dancehall" began to draw on other rhythms such as Kumina and to a lesser extent, American hip-hop so that recent music from Jamaica bears little resemblance to the rhythms and beats of classic ska, rocksteady and reggae. 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. 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 created 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 transcribers to use the term "swing 8ths" to help notate hi-hat patterns, for example. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rocksteady」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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