First things first - download your free transcription here.
One year ago I made a video on the family of grooves we were starting to see…well…everywhere.
They weren’t like other grooves - not “boom chick” like rock, not “straight 16th” like James Gadson/Stubblefield funk, nor even like shuffles per se.
Their closest living relative were probably the linear funk grooves of players like David Garibaldi, but of course “the kids” were putting a gen-z topspin on them.
Players like Jharis Yokley, Zack G, and recent podcast guest Berj Fazlian were chief among the drummers taking this way of playing to the next level.
At the time, I didn’t know what to call them. So I invented a name: “clave flow”. Which is also the title of the course I created around them in JP Bouvet Method. (Link and coupon codes below.)
Since then, they’ve become more recognized, and have a mainstream name: flow grooves.
So - what are they, exactly?
Strictly speaking, it’s any practically-continuous improvisation around a backbeat - not necessarily “3” or “2 and 4”. It’s usually done with chatter between closed hats and snare ghost notes - though often with extra implements like cowbells on the snare - and usually places the backbeat on the snare, though sometimes it’s on the stack. It’s mostly linear, though not without exception.
But it’s always easier to demonstrate than to explain. Click on the video, and you’ll immediately see examples of Berj and Zack playing them.
And students love these. It’s way out of proportion with what I would have predicted. But my guess is that learning the system to play these grooves gives people a feeling of freedom they haven’t felt before while grooving.
Ok - but how do we learn them?
You can get transcriptions practically everywhere, but I tend toward the “teach a person to fish” approach. Hence, I’m going to show you a simple system to get you started.
And it’s way simpler than when I first considered these grooves a year ago. We’ve had a year of refinement working on it with students, and working through the course material for JP.
In fact, I bet if you take the basic lessons (“rule of 16”, “rule of 8”) into the shed, you should be able to play basic versions of these grooves in just a day.
Hope you enjoy!
P.S. I’m doing a small promo for JP Bouvet Method this week, where the above-mentioned course lives. If you dig this youtube video, you’ll probably want to go way more in-depth, with tons of written examples. You can grab a 7-day trial to JP Bouvet Method and support me in the process using my affiliate link here, and, until next Friday, you can save…
-50%/month x 6 months with the code SaveMonthlyJun26
-$100 off your first year with the code SaveAnnualJun26
Just enter the codes at checkout.