The early 80s were kind of a heyday for hip hihat work. Stewart Copeland and Omar Hakim, really got my attention for that, anyway. Can two great players make a heyday? You decide. Here’s Hakim’s […]
Category: funk
Practice loop: The Meters / Cabbage Alley
Take care of your mental wellbeing and forget this political nightmare for awhile, with this cheery practice loop, sampled from Cabbage Alley by The Meters. Excellent for use with this late plethora of funk materials. […]
Transcription: John Guerin – Backfence Cattin’
Here’s some 70s funk in 3/4: Backfence Cattin’ by Tom Scott, with John Guerin on drums. You could call Scott L.A.’s answer to Dave Sanborn— big in the 70s-80s, R&B saxophonists who made some popular […]
FUNK CONTROL: alternative set 1 – complete
I’m working out the format for putting this “Basic Funk Ideas” series into book form, tentatively titled “Funk Control.” The top of the page, labeled “Basic rhythm and iterations” shows the source rhythmic idea for […]
Transcription: Gerry Brown / School Days
Here’s a funk/fusion classic: School Days, by Stanley Clarke, with Gerry Brown on the drums. Along with Weather Report’s Teen Town, and Donna Lee, this was one of the most-learned fusion things by electric bassists […]
Basic funk ideas in 6/8: four iterations – 01
I’m not happy with this title for this series, but I’m going to hang with it as long as we’re posting on the blog. It’s rapidly evolving into a Stick Control-like system for funk drumming […]
Orchestrating and embellishing backbeats
What do we do with this? Someone bored with playing backbeats all night asked this question on the Drummerworld forum: “What do you do to spice up the 2 & 4?” My answer is: I […]
Basic funk ideas: four iterations – 03
Another page of this modern funk method— we’re going to need a better name for this thing, as we’re getting well beyond basic. This is turning into quite an epic. Normally, working on fairly demanding […]
Daily best music in the world: Breezin’
Here’s something very great: Harvey Mason playing Breezin’, written by Bobby Womack, on George Benson’s album of the same title in 1976. As far as I’m concerned there’s really no higher artistry in drumming than […]
Practice loop: The Meters / Doodle-Oop
Oh, and you might want a slightly slower loop to hang with the sixtuplets on the new page of funk stuff, so here’s some more Meters. The tempo is about 90 BPM, and the NOLA-style swing […]
Basic funk ideas: four iterations – 02
I’m liking this format— like Stick Control for funk drumming— so we’ll see a few more of these. This page takes the same series of patterns from the last two items (“mixed stickings” and “four […]
Practice loop: The Meters / The Same Old Thing
A new funk practice loop, sampled from The Same Old Thing, by The Meters. Use this with these two recent pages, or any of my funk stuff. The tempo is about 106 bpm. The 16th notes […]