{"id":7238,"date":"2019-06-22T09:09:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T16:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drumeo.com\/blog\/?p=7238"},"modified":"2024-07-05T12:13:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T19:13:10","slug":"a-drummers-guide-to-funk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drumeo.com\/beat\/a-drummers-guide-to-funk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Drummer’s Guide To Funk"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from The Drummer’s Toolbox: The Ultimate Guide To Learning 101 Drumming Styles<\/a>. The book goes into even more detail about funk drumming!
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Funk: A brief introduction to the genre<\/b><\/h3>\n

Funk developed in the United States during the mid-1960s as a hybrid of soul, jazz, and blues music. It was one of the first styles of music to place more emphasis on rhythm than melody and harmony. The key innovator of funk music during the 1960s was James Brown, who began his career in the 1950s as a soul musician. Largely thanks to Brown\u2019s innovations, funk music brought rhythm section players off of the sidelines and into the musical spotlight. This style is known for featuring \u201cslap\u201d bass, guitar effects like \u201cwah-wah\u201d, horn sections, and syncopated drum grooves. <\/span><\/p>\n

Harmonically, funk music is more complex than soul music, and by the 1970s it had eclipsed soul as a major genre in the United States. Some of the most famous funk bands and artists of all time include The Meters, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament, Funkadelic, and Tower of Power\u2014and of course James Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n

Funk drumming often features syncopation and rhythmic displacement, rudiment-based hand patterns, hi-hat openings, ghost notes, and linear patterns\u2014when no two limbs play at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Fundamentals<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In funk music, the snare drum <\/span>backbeats aren\u2019t always played on beats two and four. Typically only one backbeat will fall on beat two or four in a funk groove. The other backbeat(s) will be played on less common eighth or sixteenth note placements. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here are a few grooves that demonstrate some different backbeat placements.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Linear drumming <\/b>is another essential part of playing funk. This concept applies to playing both funk grooves and fills. Here are some examples that apply the concept of linear drumming:<\/span><\/p>\n

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