Building the Funky Drummer beat

I’m developing some groove pedagogy for an instrumental method book I’m working on with Heather Fortune. The goal is to help people understand and create Black American vernacular rhythms, specifically blues, rock, funk, dance, and hip-hop. As we started collecting and transcribing grooves, we quickly ran into a problem: all the really good ones use complex syncopated rhythms that are hard for beginners. Meanwhile, the music in beginner-level method books is rhythmically bland and unfunky. What do we do?

Heather takes a creative approach to arranging for her school bands. For each part, she creates two versions: a simplified one and an advanced one, which she places side by side in the score. Students can start out playing the simplified versions, and when they are ready to challenge themselves with the “real” music, they can just jump seamlessly over. This enables Heather to accommodate players at different levels in the same ensemble. I like this idea, and it made me think we should do something similar for groove pedagogy. My thought was this: for each groove, create a series of simplified versions, moving in incremental steps from basic quarter notes to the full syncopated complexity of the actual music. The real challenge is that we want each version of the groove to be musically satisfying, so even if you can’t handle the pure uncut funk yet, you can at least play something that sounds good.

In this post, I test the method out on the Funky Drummer break. The video below shows an Ableton Live session I made that moves from an extremely simplified  quarter note version through incrementally more advanced rhythms every four bars.

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There Was A Time (I Got To Move)

Being a fan of James Brown can be a challenge, because his classic songs have all been recorded multiple times in different versions with different names on different labels. “I Got To Move” is a case in point.

It was first released on In The Jungle Groove in 1986, but was recorded back in 1970. The strangely tacked-on intro is an excerpt from a different song, “Give It Up Or Turnit a-Loose.” Except that the specific version of “Give It Up Or Turnit a-Loose” they took the excerpt from was titled “In The Jungle Groove,” which is where they got the name of this compilation. Except that the full song “In The Jungle Groove” was not on this compilation, and has actually never been released. Like I said: confusing! Anyway, the point is, once “I Got To Move” proper starts at 0:29, it’s unbelievably funky.

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Dorian mode

Dorian mode is such a cool scale. It evokes medieval chant and the blues. Its characteristic minor sixth chord is almost a diminished chord. And it’s unique among the diatonic modes for being symmetrical, meaning that it uses the same sequence of intervals going up and down. When you write Dorian on the chromatic circle, it’s left-right symmetrical, and it’s even more obviously symmetrical on the circle of fifths.

Dorian mode is like a combination of the natural minor scale and Mixolydian mode. You can make Dorian by raising the sixth of natural minor, or by flatting the third of Mixolydian.

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The Ghostbusters theme song

It’s Halloween, and that means that everyone is scrambling to find seasonal music beyond Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” In the pharmacy this morning, I heard “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr, and remembered that it’s an absolute banger. This is one of a long list of songs that I loved as a kid, became embarrassed by as a teenager, forgot about in young adulthood, and then learned to fully appreciate in middle age. I watched the movie about a thousand times as a kid and had the soundtrack on cassette. But it took me until recently to understand why I loved the song so much, and why I foolishly became embarrassed by it for a while.

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Patrice Rushen’s memory songs

White people do not generally grow up listening to Patrice Rushen; we have to seek her out. I only got hip to her when I heard her speak at the 2018 Ableton Loop conference in Los Angeles. I quickly learned that she co-wrote and produced one of the bangingest bangers in history.

The devastating bassline is by Freddie Washington, and the silky smooth sax is by Gerald Albright. I don’t normally go in for this style of R&B sax, but that solo is too funky and on point to resist.

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I Wanna Be Your Lover

In addition to drumming with the Roots, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is a brilliant DJ, and he wrote a Twitter thread about his top ten most reliable dance floor fillers. Prince figures heavily in the thread, first because he once tipped Quest $100 for having the audacity to slip Miles Davis’ “Milestones” into a DJ set. But of course the thread also talks about Prince’s own music, including “I Wanna Be Your Lover”. This reminded me that it’s one of the best funk songs ever recorded, and that I should transcribe it.

Songfacts says that Prince wrote the song about Patrice Rushen, who did some synth programming on his first album. They never got together, though. As with so many of his classics, Prince wrote, performed and produced the track himself. The album version includes a longer jam at the end, and rightly so. It’s a killer funk instrumental in its own right. And it’s Prince jamming with himself!

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Betty Davis and the blues sus4

I heard this Betty Davis song while I was doing a shift at the Park Slope Food Coop and the guitar riff grabbed my ears. In this post, I explain why, and what the riff can tell us about blues harmony.

First of all: is this music blues? You might argue that it’s a funk song. It is a funk song, but Tony Bolden’s book Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk makes the case that, well, it’s right there in the title. The sixteenth-note swing of funk is different from the eighth-note shuffle of the blues, but they share the same harmonic structure, and the same general cultural context. Betty Davis makes the connection explicit in this song, which is all about her and her family’s love of the blues. Continue reading

Crosseyed And Painless

Since I’m stuck in my apartment with Covid for a while, looks like I have plenty of time to continue my Talking Heads series. Here’s one of their funkiest and most Afrobeat-sounding tracks.

David Byrne always speak-sings to an extent, but this song has an actual rap verse (“Facts are simple and facts are straight…”) Chris Frantz says that he played Byrne “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow to inspire his delivery. Frantz also says that the song’s title refers to being extremely drunk.

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Take Me To The River

See the complete Talking Heads series

The only cover that Talking Heads ever recorded was a tune co-written by Al Green and his guitarist Teenie Hodges.

Like all Al Green classics, this was produced by the great Willie Mitchell. Teenie’s brothers Charles and Leroy play organ and bass respectively, the drums are by Howard Grimes, the horns are by the Memphis Horns, and the strings are by the Memphis Strings. The Reverend Al dedicated the song to his cousin Junior Parker.

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