African · highlife · 4/4 straight

Highlife guitar

118 bpm Loop: all
16ths

Mixer

Keyboard

Strums

1
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
2
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

Highlife guitar — the Ghanaian/Nigerian dance-band style where two clean guitars interlock. Guitar 1 (the guitar layer) picks a rising-and-falling arpeggio in even eighths through I–IV–V–I. Guitar 2 answers with a two-note figure on the off-beats: the and of 1, the a of 2 and the and of 2.

The DSL has one guitar part, so guitar 2 is written in the piano layer — read it as a second clean guitar (or a keyboard taking its role, which highlife bands do too).

How it sits: the drums are light — hi-hat eighths, kick on 1 and the and of 3, rim-click on 2 and 4. The bass plays root on 1, a pickup fifth on the and of 2, and the chord changes every half bar.

Listen for the composite: the arpeggio fills the on-beats, the second line fills the gaps, and together they make a sixteenth-note shimmer nobody is actually playing.

Practice: loop guitar 1 alone until it is metronomic, then add the piano/guitar-2 line.

Sources

  • standard practice; no transcribed source

Keyboard

Space
Play / pause
← →
Loop the previous / next bar
1–6
Mute layer 1–6
[ ]
Tempo −5 / +5
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