Funk/R&B Drums

Funk/R&B drums plays a major role in much of the music we hear today. For example, Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown's drummer and the original "Funky Drummer," created one of most sampled rhythmic breaks ever - a key component of countless songs found in both hip-hop and popular music.

In Funk/R&B Drums, you'll focus on developing solid time and an "in the pocket," laid-back time feel to your playing. To that end, you'll explore topics such as triplet-based blues and gospel patterns, shuffles, New Orleans style R&B, ghost notes, bass drum technique, sixteenth-note patterns, various hi-hat patterns and openings, fills, displaced backbeats, playing and setting up ensemble figures, and drum breaks. You'll learn about the history of this style, starting with the blues and gospel music and moving toward the highly syncopated and sixteenth-note based rhythms of the 70s and 80s.

Each lesson includes video demonstrations, listening analyses, transcriptions, practice exercises, and an assignment in which you will perform over a song track that contains the elements covered in the lesson. The course also covers many of the artists who were instrumental in creating this style, including Clyde Stubblefield, Earl Palmer, B. B. King, James Brown, Jabo Starks, Ray Charles, Average White Band, Kool and the Gang, The Meters, Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste, Tower of Power, David Garibaldi, Aretha Franklin, Bernard Purdie, Earth, Wind & Fire, Herbie Hancock, and Medeski, Martin & Wood.

The course is geared to players who have a basic knowledge of rock and are interested in expanding their skill set, students who may be on the path to a professional career, and jazz players who may not be familiar with funk and want to learn the genre. The goal of the course is to enable you to play songs and improvise rhythms in the style of funk and R&B.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• identify the blues and gospel roots of R&B and funk drumming
• perform triplet-based blues and gospel rhythms, the up-tempo two-beat gospel/R&B groove, basic and double shuffles, and New Orleans eighth-note groove syncopated bass drum patterns
• put swing feel into R&B and funk rhythms
• apply eighth-note and sixteenth-note hi-hat patterns with various openings
• play syncopated 16th note bass drum patterns
• play R&B fills
• perform with kicks, ensemble figures, and fills
• perform rhythms with displaced backbeats and ghost notes
• perform linear rhythms with swing feel
• analyze and play four classic drum breaks
• orchestrate the latin clave, the rhumba and two latin cowbell patterns on the drumset
• apply the "buzz" and other embellishments to your playing

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