060-080 BPM, Funk, Jazz | by Ryan
Somewhere in Between.
There is a special feel that was born from the brass bands of New Orleans. It first emerged around the turn of the 20th century and eventually worked its way north, merging into other styles of music along the way. This is a groove that is neither triplet nor sixteenth note based. It’s not straight funk and it’s not totally swung. It’s somewhere in between. It’s a feel that’s literally impossible to notate on sheet music and even harder to play.
Bill Stewart
There are only a handful of drummers in modern music who can truly find this “in between” feel and make it work in a variety of musical settings. Two of my favorites are Bill Stewart and Idris Muhammad. Whether they’re keeping it cool on a straight ahead jazz session or laying down back beats behind a funk band, they always manage to find this rhythmic sweet-spot.
Idris Muhammad
Loop #22
Today’s beat is a four measure loop based on this “in between” feel. It’s a lazy funk groove that borrows more than a few licks from Bill and Idris (guys, the po’ boys are on me next time). And you, sitting in front of your computer, don’t even think about touching that quantizer.
Preview Here:
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Download the Logic session here. (67MB)
Non-Logic fools, get your .wav files here.
66 BPM
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Dusk says;
So iLL!
Things like this are why I wish Image-line (makers of FL Studio) would bring their Sampler Channels into the FPC (drum module). For those who don’t know, basically the situation right now is, if you use Sampler Channels, you’ve got all the tools you need, but you’re clicking on steps in a step sequencer (can be good but since it’s a step sequencer it’s perfectly quantized all the time). And then if you use the FPC, you can play different drums on the keyboard at the same time like a drummer, but you don’t have as much control over the samples you use in the FPC as you do if you used Sampler Channels.
(My comment is a bit off-topic but I’m just saying that organic drumming like that, that breaks away from perfectly-quantized beats is very refreshing and inspiring!)