english blog

Hey, some time ago I promised you a new book— a collection of transcribed intros— before the end of the year. Work on that got sidelined as I was preparing for tour, and there's no way I'm finishing in the time frame I wanted. But I'll get back to it now, and see if I can't slam it out by January. You may also have noticed the style of my printed music has changed slightly; I've upgraded to Finale 2014, and the default styles are a little different than my old one. I'm trying to maintain as much continuity as possible, but some of these transitional things may look a little different as I figure things out. If there's one thing I learned from Joel Rothman , it's that continuity of style matters... you can always tell one of his books by just looking at the style of the copy ... So, here's another drum intro, from our man Tiki Fulwood . The tune is Good Old Music, from the first, self-titled Funkadelic record: Yesterday we made big deal out of Fulwood...

Another GOTD by my favorite Funkadelic drummer, Tiki Fulwood . The tune is Red Hot Mama, from Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On, by Funkadelic, of course. The groove for the verse: The song consists of a one-measure vamp on the verses, plus a two-measure chorus, played four times. As the song develops, Fulwood moves to the cymbal, and the bass drum part gets denser, with more variations. He also plays 8th notes on the hihat with his left foot when he plays the ride cymbal, which I haven't included in the notation: The first thing young drummers learn to do to mature their funk feel, and distinguish themselves from those primitive rock & roll meatheads, is to accent the hihat, usually on the beat: Once learned, it's easy to fall into doing this routinely, without thinking about the musical effect. But you can hear that on this song Fulwood plays his right hand dead even and strong, and it sounds great. For that matter, the ghost notes on the snare drum, the obsession du...