Five Classic Funk Beats Every Drummer Should Know

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Funk Beat Transcriptions

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I suspect we’re all on the lookout for ways/reasons to “feel good” this holiday season…

…and who better to turn than to the old masters of funk and soul drumming.

That’s why, this week, I’ve curated a list of my favorite classic funk beats, and the drummers who invented them. I purposefully avoided looking at other drummers’ “top five” lists before making mine, but I suspect none of these funk pioneers will be controversial.

They’re the same folks on everybody’s “comfort listening playlist”.

They’re in so many movie soundtracks I hope they’re getting paid handsomely.

These drummers and beats are so famous, they’re even famous to non-drummers.

But that doesn’t mean what they do is easy.

Do we really know how these famous beats are played? With all the nuances?

This week, a trip down memory lane: revisiting the classic funk and soul beats we all grew up with - even before we knew we wanted to play the drums - with just a little detail about how to play them. (This is far from an exhaustive lesson on the topic, for which you could do hours on each of them.)

Please enjoy, and wherever you are in the world, and whatever holiday you celebrate, have a good one!

That Time I Learned I Sucked at The Drums

Ahoy!

I'm back with another free lesson, and this week it's a little philosophy/self-talk.

Have you heard the term "growth mindset"?

It sounds really good on a button or a bumper sticker. "I'm not going to let my ego get involved. I'm not going to get attached to how good I am. I'm only interested in learning."

Nice. If you're a complete beginner, or a wisened veteran, you can maybe pull that off.

If you're anywhere in "the dip" - which is to say anything other than a total beginner or world-beater, good luck with that.

With drums, I'm currently in a spot where I'm surprised by how bad I am less frequently these days. Maybe that's one definition of success. A reasonably clear picture of how you sound to others.

In jiujitsu, however...damn.

As you'll see in [the video], my friend Hardcore is able to crush me like a bug. And he's half my size. You just see me flopping around like a suffocating fish.

And here's the surprising thing: I felt pretty good in that roll.

Today's video is about the rude awakenings we get when we think we're at a certain level, then we see some tape that...knocks us back down to earth.

And that moment came for me with drums in a big way circa 2010/2011.

As I explain in the video, I'd already been playing gigs, I'd long since graduated from music school, but I didn't know why I wasn't getting called more often blah blah. Until I heard a couple of recordings that really drove it home.

When you record yourself with a band, it's easier to "hide". Other musicians will compensate for you, and if the overall product isn't stellar, it's pretty easy to blame on the ensemble/room acoustics/etc. This explains how somebody can gig for a decade, and listen to gig tapes, and not know there's anything wrong.

But try to play a drum cover, and all of a sudden you hear every single 16th that's not lining up with the band, or the original drummer, who, of course, are not adjusting to you.

Such was my experience. And, as I explain in the video, I ran myself a bath and sat in it the whole afternoon. It felt horrible.

But the only out is through. I eventually grappled with my pain, embraced the "suck", and used it to try to improve.

This video is about how you can do the same.

Hope you enjoy!

What would pros think of your jazz playing?

Ever wonder what faculty members at Berklee, or MSM, or Juilliard, or NYU, would be listening for if you played jazz drums for them?

Ever wonder, if you sat in at Smalls after one of your jazz heroes, what he or she would be listening to to judge your jazz playing?

Well, of course, it’s impossible to know exactly.

Everybody’s different and values things differently. Plus, if there’s a way to read minds if hasn’t made its way to me yet.

But we can make educated guesses.

I can judge based on what past teachers have told me, and based on the things I learned to value more highly in the process of becoming a better drummer. And I think we can get pretty close.

Many of these things are, by definition, subtle. If we knew what they were we’d probably be better.

But over the years of listening to jazz drummers who have the bare minimum package to swing and those still proto…that point (and there’s nothing wrong with that)…

…one develops an intuition. One overhears others sitting on an audition panel quip “if I could just hear one person xyz before the end of the day, my faith in humanity won’t be utterly destroyed.”

(Audition panels are a grind.)

If you’re an aspiring jazz drummer, wouldn’t you like to know what “xyz” is?

In this video, I’ll tell you.

Five subtle sings pros listen to to determine whether or not a jazz drummer is legit.

Watch it here.

See you soon,

N

3 Fills for Purdie Shuffles

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Greetings!

Today I bring you three easy sounding fills for purdie shuffles, “that sound hard”.

The whole “easy thing that sounds hard” thing isn’t usually my jam, but in this case “hard” really means “interesting”.

The usual fills we pull out in triplet or sextuplet situations are boring for a couple of reasons: predictable phrasing, and predictable orchestration. I like to begin a lot of my fills on the snare and hats, and practice orchestrating them creatively, so that’s the genesis of these 3.

The first 2 are just specific patterns you can play on various parts of the kit, or on various parts of the beat…

…but the third is more like “glue” - just a simple pattern to allow combinations of the previous two. I know once you mess with these a little, you’ll start having fun and making some new shapes.

Hope you enjoy!