The Funky Drummer Drum Beat

Learn the Funky Drummer- One of the most sampled grooves in history

The Funky Drummer is one of the most famous drum breaks (or break beats) in the history of recorded music and as such it is one the most sampled drum beats ever having appeared in countless tracks across a range of genres. Although the practice of sampling old funk grooves really came about through rap and hip hop initially.

The beat is performed by Clyde Stubblefield on the James Brown track. Clyde was one of Brown’s favourite drummers alongside Jabo Starks and has been responsible for playing a large role in shaping funk drumming as we know it with great use of syncopation and ghost notes.

The funky drummer is built upon a challenging single handed 16th note hi-hat pattern. This is probably the most technically challenging aspect of the groove. A technique that can help master this speed and control is the push pull technique.

In around that hi-hat part Clyde adds syncopated bass drums and snares, open hi-hats and the use of ghost notes as well as accented snares. It creates a thick funky layered groove. Another big challenge is playing ghost noted snares followed immediately with accented snares.

In short this is a challenging groove that you should learn very slowly to achieve quality and then gradually bring up to speed.

I should also point out that this is a two bar example from the groove. The drum part actually varies quite a bit. My advice is to learn a section like the one in the lesson below, become very comfortable with that, and then learn to add suitable variations in and around it. That’s what Clyde does. He’s just grooving and adding variations as he feels them.

Some of the bands and artists that have sampled the funky drummer include:

• Dr Dre
• Jay Z
• Public Enemy
• NWA
• L L Cool J
• Nicki Minaj
• Emeli Sande
• Sublime
• Beastie Boys
• Ed Sheeran

And many, many more.

Watch the video below to hear how it sounds and then scroll down to click through and grab the lesson.

p.s. If you want to learn the other most sampled drum beat ever then check out the Amen Break too.

So if you want to get super funky and learn this groove (which you definitely should!) then click below to start.

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Watch the video to get a feel for what the seven day course entails and then scroll down to get the course immediately.

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