Q: How can I make this funkier?

Wow, so it's been almost six months since the last posting. I apologize to the fans, first and foremost. I hope you've stuck with me, and not given up hope (the same hope that you likely gave up for Slash and Axl making music again; the NBA to play a game; or for Dr. Dre to finally release that Detox album).

Please, stop. Just . . . don't.

Life got a little crazy with the third-year law schoolin' and Editor-in-Chiefing and so forth. But, here we are, closing in on exams; instead of working on understanding the nuances of patent litigation or the intersection of the Eleventh Amendment, the Anti-Injunction Act, and federal common law, I bring you a new post. A short and sweet one, but a post nonetheless.

I hope in this post to answer the question posed in the title, "How Can I Make This Funkier?" I think we've all asked that at some point, right? I mean, some people made an entire career out of asking for things to be "funkier," or to be made "funky," in general.

He didn't really have to ask, did he?

As I was listening to some tunes today (on my awesome hi-tech ultra mixtape mixer/maker, the iPod - big ups to Steve J-o-bs, RIP), I was struck by the greatness of a little ditty you might recall from 1997/98: Fiona Apple's "Criminal."


"Peek-a-boo, it's about to get creepy in here." - Fiona Apple, 1997

Sure, you remember it. You saw the video just like I did and were pretty weirded out by it. Maybe you couldn't put your finger on it:

Uh, is this security camera footage?
Why is she so skinny?
Are these the non-porn parts from a late-70s porn?
What's with the reflective cat-eyes?
Is this about heroin?
Why are you in my closet?!
Seriously, is this porn?

The first hit for a Google search of: "criminal porn." Never been so happy to see Charlie Sheen. Thank you, Safe Search: Moderate.

YouTube won't let me embed the video, so you'll have to go here to see the Mark Romanek/Harris Savedis creepy-fest. Regardless of the creepiness and the lingering dirty feeling you had when the video was over, you couldn't deny - that song was awesome! Yeah, it pretty much kicked everybody else's ass on the scene at the time (read: Ma$e and Chumbawamba) with its amazing production (layers, people!), creepy vocals, and [above all] the drums! The production elements and arrangements are courtesy of Jon Brion (don't sleep on him) and Fiona. She might be a total celebrity-kook, but Fiona's got skills. The drums, though, are courtesy of frequent Apple-collaborator and certifiable BAMF, Matt Chamberlain. Just check out that discography if you need any proof.

So, you know the song. Point is, I caught something today I hadn't really appreciated/noticed before. I encourage you to listen to the track with headphones to find it yourself. In fact, here it is:

Yeah, you remember it now. Listen at 0:45-ish, where it goes into the "Don't you tell me to deny it" part before the chorus. It gets a lot funkier there, doesn't it? Why is that? Is it the chord change? Maybe. Is it just the rising tension? Possibly. I think, however, it's something more subtle and unique, and something that has been making songs phantomly funkier (fantomly phunkier?) for years. Answer: 2 hi-hats.


Not to be confused with . . . see what I did there?

It's hard to hear on the YouTube vid, but if you've got the track on mp3 or (gasp!) CD, you can hear the second hi-hat added in the right channel right as that pre-chorus bit starts. It's likely that it's a whole second drum track, overlaid on the first. I don't know exactly the process involved in the recording, but this is what I posit based on what I'm hearing. Chamberlain is playing 16th-notes on the hi-hat here (with a lot of 'e' accents), layering on top of the 8th-note groove of the main verse. Yeah, it's subtle, and it works very well.

How do they make it better when they reach the chorus, though? The whole "What I need . . ." bit? It's extra soulful (for a skinny white girl, anyway), so you need a tambourine. Perfect. The tambourine lays down the same 16th-notes that the second hi-hat is giving us, and it's in both the left and right channels, so we've got three layers of percussion here, pushing us through the chorus. Add to that Fiona's dotted eighth-note rhythms that go across the barline (see the "'cause I'm fee - lin - like - a - cri - min - al" part), and the trippy sounding woodwind patch (or is it a mellotron? calliope, maybe?) that leads us back into Verse 2, and you've got a pretty much perfect first 1/3 of a song. But they're not done. As soon as we get to Verse 2, all those layers drop out and you're back to one drum track, no tambourine, and just the groove.

Damn.


"You're welcome." - Jon Brion and Fiona Apple

And this continues for the rest of the song, eventually culminating in that incredible bridge (2:46 - 3:11) with the brass part ascending through the A-flat 7 chord while the bass part descends, Matt Chamberlain plowing some sextuplets (the only triplet rhythms in the tune) finally releasing the tension, which gets us back to a re-cap of the "What I need . . ." part.

Whew.

So, in sum, I think the root of all this excitement/tension-release/layering can be found in one element: the second hi-hat. To me, the hi-hat is one of the drummer's most powerful tools. When used correctly, it can really add a lot to a production. It keeps time, it can be accented/un-accented to create texture, and it can be opened and closed to create long, tied sounds or short, crisp "barks." A drummer doesn't need more pieces on his kit to spice up his playing, he just needs to be creative with what he's got. Look at ?uestlove, the drummers for James Brown, or that guy from Mute Math. They don't have complicated set-ups, they just work with what they've got.

Pictured: misleading simplicity.

And as far as the hi-hat goes, it takes some chutzpah to go out on a limb with it. You can't just be opening and closing that thing wily-nily. On the contrary, you've got to have style. And if you dare write a song that might layer drums or percussion over the first drum track (and if it's a second hi-hat that's an even taller order), well, you better know what you're doing.

Here are some folks that do know what they're doing:

Soul Searchers, "Ashley's Roachclip"

Go to 3:36. Yeah, you've heard that before. A lot. One hi-hat but it sounds like two (the drummer's touch, no doubt), plus tambourine. Damn.

The Jacksons, "Shake Your Body Down to the Ground"

The layering starts from the jump. It sounds like the toms are being played separately from the hi-hat/snare/bass part. Then, at 0:33 we get to the chorus ("Let's dance / let's shout . . ."), and we get another layer in the left channel: lo and behold! a second hi-hat. You like it.

Tom Petty, "You Got Lucky"

I know what you're thinking, "You're following up a classic break and f'n Michael Jackson with Tom Petty?!" And the answer is yes. This is a perfect example for today's thesis: a second hi-hat, when appropriately scored, makes a tune funkier. Go to 2:41. There it is, the second hi-hat layered on top of the part we've been hearing for the duration of the song. Here, I bet it's either two different sized hi-hats, or one is a drum machine and one is a real hi-hat (given the differences in the sound the hi-hat makes when opened). Stan Lynch goes us one better on sonority, though, and plays the second part to complement the first (by opening the hi-hat on the 'ah' of 1 and the 'and' of 2, leading right into the previous hi-hat part that opens on 3). He creates a dialog between the two. Subtle, and perfect for the song.

So there you have it. A whole post about the power of the hi-hat without one mention of Stewart Copeland (a man so prolific on the hi-hat (apparently) that he was credited with just playing that on Peter Gabriel's, "Big Time"). I think I've made my point, though, that subtlety usually equals funkiness.

Pictured: Stewart Copeland, the model of subtlety.

It's that intangible funkiness that just grabs hold and makes you say, "I love this." And that's the best kind, isn't it?

Sample Example, pt. 2

I'm sure you've all seen this strange, but effective KIA commercial:


Who wouldn't take their sock monkey to a club with them? And a robot doing the robot is just perfectly post-modern.

The music used in that commercial is "How Ya Like Me Now?" by The Heavy. Who is "The Heavy" you ask? I have no idea, but I bet they're British - because British bands use samples of American music to make American-sounding music, right? (see, e.g. EMF, Big Audio Dynamite, Stereo MCs).


Different kind of 'British sampling'.

The reason C-Murder is bringing this to your attention is because of the too, too funky sample used in the song.


...or as they say in Italy, "Tutto funky!"

That sample is, "Let A Woman Be A Woman - Let A Man Be A Man" from 1969 by Dyke and The Blazers.

Let a Woman Be a Woman.mp3

Fantastic, isn't it? I think my favorite part (other than the break), is the dialog:

DYKE: "hey fellas!"
THE BLAZERS: "Yeah!"
DYKE: "Ya'll see anything wrong with Sally's walk?"
THE BLAZERS: "Naw!"
DYKE: "All right then...tell me 'bout it...hah!"

According to the little info available on the intehnets, three guys from Buffalo were in a band called The Blazers that backed up the "before-they-were-riding-on-a-Love-Train" O'Jays (also from Buffalo). Those three (Arlester "Dyke" Christian - bass, Alvester "Pig" Jacobs - guitar, and JV "No Nickname" Hunt - saxophone) were stranded in Phoenix after the O'Jays couldn't afford to get them back to Buffalo. As a result, the three hired an organist, a bassist (so Dyke switched to vocals), a drummer, and another saxophone player. They became Dyke and The Blazers and a made a big impact on the local Phoenix soul scene.


Any band with a guy named "Arlester" and another guy named "Alvester" has to be pretty good...

Dyke and The Blazers were well on their way to being a heavy-hitting soul/funk outfit of the 60s and 70s. Their first record, "Funky Broadway" (the one Wilson "Wicked" Pickett covered and scored a #1 hit with), is often thought to be the first time the word "funk" was used as the title to a record. From this, Dyke was makin' bank (since he was the writer), while his band was making about $100 a show. The rest of The Blazers eventually quit on Dyke, but it didn't matter because he started working with the guys that would become the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band (you know them from "Express Yourself")...and got even funkier.

The reason you may not have heard of Dyke and The Blazers by name, though, and the reason they didn't get famous, was because Dyke was shot and killed in an altercation in 1971, just a few short years after he got the band going in the right direction. A tragic end to a short climb. I personally think they would have been huge, since Dyke sounded a lot like Otis Redding (another tragic story of a life cut too short, too soon), and the band was as good as The JBs and Booker T. & the MGs over at Stax.

What you hear in "Let A Woman Be A Woman" are those Watts 103rd St. guys. In particular, you hear the funkiness of James Gadson, a sorely underrated, yet supremely funky drummer.


James Gadson - with a wig like that...this guy means business.

James Gadson went on to be the drummer for Bill Withers, played on "Dancin' Machine", "I Will Survive", "Love Hangover", and countless other amazing funky soul tracks. And this guy is STILL working today!

Since we're talking about the greatness and obscurity of Dyke and The Blazers, allow me to share a couple other great tracks:

The Wobble.mp3 - This tune is just a great slice of funk. According to what I can find, this may be Dyke's third drummer, Wardell "Baby Wayne" Peterson, coming after James Gadson.

Runaway People.mp3 - This one is about, as the title indicates, people that runaway. Not sure if this was a big problem in the late 60s, but it was on Dyke's mind. My favorite part is probably the break, which was sampled here by Mr. Tracy Marrow (doing business as Ice-T) on "Microphone Contract" from his 1991 classic, "OG - Original Gangster":


You won't find a better use of the phrase, "You better be a good bullet-ducker".

So, in short, check out these tracks, in fact, if you Right-Click them, you can save them (FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY). Just doing my part to share great music with the masses.
I would also recommend picking up "So Sharp!", a collection of their hits.



Until next time...