Anyone know where I can find some books that will teach me how to play ska. I'm looking for styles like madness, the specials, and the toasters. List web sites that teach or sell books on the subject.
Never mind books, best way to learn how to play most sorts of music is by listening. Listen to the ska bands you like and try to play along with them, do it on your own at first to build up confidence. Get a feel for the rhythms and the harmonic ideas. From what I know about ska the chords aren't too complex really so it should be pretty easy to pick up.
I don't know of any ska-books, but you should download Guitar Pro. It's similar to Power Tab Editor, but it's easier to use. Basically it's tab/sheet music playing a midi file over it so you can hear the tab. It also has time sig., key sig, navigation, tempo and rests. www.guitar-pro.com. www.mysongbook.com is a good library of guitar-pro files. They'll have a lot of ska music there.
If you want to listen to good old fashioned ska, pick up some General Public and English Beat. They're practically the same band, just a different name. I learned a LOT about ska sax from them, and a lot about ska bass. I'm SURE you could learn a lot about ska guitar from them. GOOD LUCK!
