I'd like to talk about the role technology played in the development of the sound. Guitar is an alternate but IMO not the primary. Keyboards seem like a good choice, but funk doesn't seem to require them. Of course there's always drums but despite funky drummers I think it's still a suportter of the bass. And the bass has to be electric, helps a bunch if it's fretless. What say you?

Poll result (19 votes) True (16 votes) Vote False (3 votes) Vote

it jump starts the groove period however in truth heavy metal had stank in the bass as well and that made alot of cuts jam as well.

gotta have the bass, guitar gotta have that wicked sound, drums gotta pound, keys or horns have to be happy and happening, voice can be in any key as long as its funky.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

that was the first standout instrument in Funk music. If you play bass a certain way, the music is automatically called "funky" by default.

which kind of brings me to something I've said about Chicago (the band). Peter Cetera in interviews since leaving the band seemed to resent playing what he called "jazzy" bass when he was in (which is a shame, because if all you know about him is that MOR, power ballad BS ... he is actually one of the baddest to touch a bass).

One of the reasons I fuck with that band despite them basically being what you'd call a "pop" band, is because of his bass playing. Cetera played that bass like a BASS... not some goddamn rock guitar on a lower octave. you know, basically what comprises the "bass" of Rock music.

not buddy guy, billy motherfuckin' cox. he was a fucking powerhouse on the bass. he was more subtle than what would come later for funk, but there's no doubt in my mind that what he did was the proto funk if indeed we can agree that bass is the primary instrument.

listen to pali gap - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRj0YEMwLkQ
there's an alternate take of "room full of mirrors" that he just kills.


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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

and he was a Good Bass Player his ownself, however he couldn't thump and Groove with the Experience and he knew that, he also knew that the Band of GYpys was going to be seen as a cult act and not get near the same amount of attention as what had established him.

however Hendrix was badd enough to get funky when he saw fit and he played both sides up and real well

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

>listen to pali gap -
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRj0YEMwLkQ
>there's an alternate take of "room full of mirrors" that he
>just kills.

I can't help but think that the genesis of that style of play comes from jazz music... good stuff here.

>I can't help but think that the genesis of that style of play
>comes from jazz music... good stuff here.

From Pettiford to Mingus. Pettiford opened the door for it when he started playing cello. The slightly higher register allowed him to have a more melodic presence in the groove rather than the walking lines typically expected of the bass, which of course came from the fact that prior to the upright the bass was handled by the tuba. Pettiford brought that freedom from the cello to the bass and the rest is history.


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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

and pali gap is THAT SHIT

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“The other dude after me didn’t help my case. It was just like…crazy nigga factory going on.”
Dre makes no apologies for his own eccentricities. “I was young, and searching, trying to find myself,” he says. “Never did.”-- Andre B

I mean it was cool to hear someone laying down thicker bass lines than what you'd been used to hearing Noel do with The Experience (which was almost using bass in a rhythm guitar style) but let's be real. That was still Jimi's guitar running the show.

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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

but now that I read again, you actually didn't.

i dug Chicago though they were like a soullless version of the Average White band or the Bee Gees, Tower of Power or Steely Dan.

Chicago could play and had moments no doubt, however Ceteria wanted money tracks and hits and i don't blame him.

their is no reason why you can't have both.

if you got the goods on the instruments or the vocals, arrangements and Production then you want to hit it big.

no act should ever feel ashamed of trying to hit because you know how the business is and you gotta hit or be left in the cold.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

though i'm sure jakob will come in here and get you for it.

the difficulty with afkap's argument about rock and funk is that *we* can't escape that rock and roll is black. but when you think about that parallel for bass and guitar and differentiate what happens when there's a 'black' touch on those instruments how the genres diverge is clear. where they parallel is the changes in technology and how they adapted to them. funk was born out of the technology to play louder, with a power that wasn't possible the decade prior.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Led Zepplin had that in their stuff, Kiss " I was made for loving you" you can hear the funk and stank in the bottom.

however if you tell said artist or their fans that their is stank at the bottom of rock guitar well you might be lynched sight on seen.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

>funk was born out of the technology to play louder,
>with a power that wasn't possible the decade prior.

...but of players of the Fender Rhodes pianos (including the PianoBass) say almost universally. The Rhodes is not generally thought to be a funky instrument (that really depends on the style of music being played), but almost always what you will hear about its most signature players is that the technology to play "louder" is what drove them to stay with the instrument.

I don't doubt that it is the same with anyone else who picked up electric instruments that could be amplified. There are ideas that have always been there, but unable to be expressed without the technological backing. Ever hear keyboard players talking about how great it was that they could "bend" notes like string instrument players could? that's that technology talking.

>the difficulty with afkap's argument about rock and funk is
>that *we* can't escape that rock and roll is black.

is that you are exchanging "Rock" with "Rock & roll"... They ain't the same.

And rock & roll ain't necessarily all black either.

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not necessarily me. I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, but to clarify would you agree the parallel doesn't necessarily imply 'trying to be like'?


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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>not necessarily me. I'm pretty sure I get what you're
>saying, but to clarify would you agree the parallel doesn't
>necessarily imply 'trying to be like'?

that I keep saying that Funk was the result of brothers "trying to be like" white rockers?

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>that I keep saying that Funk was the result of brothers
>"trying to be like" white rockers?

i want to say its more a reaction to the times, technologies, fashions etc. a parallel progress which blacks took to the funk where as whites took it to rock.

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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=17&topic_id=1745&mesg_id=1745&listing_type=search

I really feel that a lot of the "freedom" that came in the Funk era was really a "white" influence... before that, Black musicians were always pretty "professional" in their presentation. I think the style (not just musical--visual, attitudinal, etc) that we came to associate with Funk came from Blacks wanting their own version of Rock.

Of course, the example I always love to use is the Bar-Kays... When the group reformed after the plane crash, they changed. They were still a "professional" Southern soul combo that looked like this:

http://i484.photobucket.com/albums/rr207/Monobus/Bar-Kays---Gotta-Groove.jpg

but musically, they were reaching a bit... taking influence from Sly Stone:

http://www.divshare.com/download/13964154-c72

That was in 1969. Their next album was in 1971, and they had taken on a heavier, wilder, funkier sound and the new freaky Black look introduced by Sly that would soon become standard for Funk. And how did they characterize their new music:

http://dreamchimney.com/slvs/Bar_Kays1_20080311075137.jpg

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because you use sly as the influence of the barkay's not rock.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

come on, fam... that much is self-evident.

(And mind you, I'm not saying he was trying to be "rock-like"... I don't think he had to *try*... he just grabbed freely from a lot of influences, and the rock of the day was one of them)

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

yeah... if you want to say he was trying to be like rock you have to show it directly.

Here's another catch though, we're talking Rock (no-roll) but in the hippie era. Psychadelic soul (Temptations) wasn't trying to be rock though? Folk were tripping on acid. You could call that very 'white'. Just trying to find the common ground so folk don't gut react to the funk was blacks trying to make white shit.

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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I mean, you gotta hear the rock in something like "Plastic Jim"

http://youtu.be/QmIPhpVQnZA

Or "Jane is a Groupee"

http://youtu.be/CbXVxDYOPAM

These are not records that would have been made in a world without the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, y'know?

>Here's another catch though, we're talking Rock (no-roll) but
>in the hippie era. Psychadelic soul (Temptations) wasn't
>trying to be rock though? Folk were tripping on acid. You
>could call that very 'white'. Just trying to find the common
>ground so folk don't gut react to the funk was blacks trying
>to make white shit.

The Temptations shit was very much influenced by Sly, by Isaac Hayes and by George Clinton (who was actually working at Motown at the time). And George will tell you how influenced he was by white shit. Isaac Hayes was also influenced by white artists (not even talking about Burt Bacharach) with his move toward longer, more ambitious pieces and the embrace of the album format as an artistic statement.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

influence and trying to be like.

like i started with, i can concede influence, it was all around em at the time, impossible not to be influenced by. but trying to be like, implies immitation and that's not what one gets from what sly was doing.

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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I can't remember if I originally used the exact wording "trying to be like"... If I did, it was careless and it has carried over to a driving engine of our conversation--an engine which is propelling it in the wrong direction.

I don't think that Black musicians necessarily were "trying to be like" white boys. But I do think that there was something in the spirit of the Rock phenomenon that they greatly admired and wanted to emulate, albeit in their own voice and with their own style.

They wanted to get away from dressing in tuxedos and doing tightly choreographed steps... they wanted the looseness and spontaneity that the rockers had. They wanted to let their hair down, so to speak.

That is the point I'm trying to make, not that they wanted to be exactly like Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison or something like that.

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One could even say that percussion is #1, because the funkiness is derived from playing the bass as if it were a percussive instrument.

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If life is stupendous one cannot also demand that it should be easy. - Robert Musil

cause it characterizes both the highs and the lows

from bernie worrell's central riff on flashlight, to roger troutman singing with it

If you were going to post up real funk that predated the synth stuff from the 80's from Gaturs to bohannon then yeah it's definitely the bass but i believe it was replaced with the synth because it could go from mosquito pitch to a thump plus carry the essence of modernity and novelty

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“The other dude after me didn’t help my case. It was just like…crazy nigga factory going on.”
Dre makes no apologies for his own eccentricities. “I was young, and searching, trying to find myself,” he says. “Never did.”-- Andre B

naw

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If life is stupendous one cannot also demand that it should be easy. - Robert Musil

>cause it characterizes both the highs and the lows

that funk as we know it was derived from a desire to express things that could not be expressed without the change of technology. Synthesizers for many years were large, unwieldy and cost prohibitive. and for many years they were monophonic as well. recording what you wanted to play with those sounds were an arduous process. But when models like the Minimoog and the ARP Odyssey came about, all you needed was someone who could remember how they built their sounds and you could travel with these boards...

so while I won't say that the synth is really what made the funk what it was, its inclusion in key records down the line ties into the same reason why electric bass became one of the most important instruments in the style of music.

Yes, I'm mad. Let's move on.

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I'm just saying shit was very important for the direction funk eventually WENT IN

and really how it is evoked today

you listen to how funk is used in modern day battlecat beats and west coast jams synth is central to that shit

Kokane feat. George Clinton on Hard as Steel is like prime example of that shit

Just copped Play With Bootsy (came out 2002)and the hardest track on there isn't highlighting bootsy's bass but uses west coast style synth funk

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

The Wah pedal (used on guitar, rhodes, bass, sometimes voice & as a studio effect)

The bass most definitely is the stankiest part of the funk, but that wah pedal allowed the guitar to wrap itself around the groove and add that extra accent to solidify the audiences stank face.

The wah pedal is so signature to funk that it even has its own catch phrase...

"bow chicka wow woooooow..."

He hardly ever utilized such effects...

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from the thought that the main reason that James is proto is because the bass isn't up front. It's there for sure but it's not fully upfront until after that becomes the standard for the form.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

And afterwards too...

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I'd say it's always there but not up front. The bass weren't heavy. Hard yes. Heavy no. I will accept audio exceptions though.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine
http://youtu.be/NeCguDYd_tw

Super Bad
http://youtu.be/LJ9CLOEOB5U

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

That being said, I think some of JB's earlier singles have pretty upfront bass-"Can't stand myself" has a pretty sick bassline if I remember correctly. The thing is that the *sound*/"Upfrontness" of the bass might not have been a conscious thing on JB's end; most of his songs were recorded ''live'' in the studio and in mono-it's not like James Jamerson putting the bass immediately in to the mixerboard or something. I think Sly's "Thank you..." was a stylistic breakthrough in terms of recording/sound and how the bass should be placed but I personally think *how* it is played in terms of rhythm etc. is more important than the sheer sound-aspect or the upfrontness...

mainly because I don't really subscribe to the notion that Sly introduced the upfront bass, or that it even became the norm after "Thank You"… At least not in the way that I am thinking about it.

"Thank You"'s bass is in the forefront as a lead voice… It's basically playing the role that a rhythm guitar would play in a conventional song. But the bass isn't "heavy"… It is "hard," in its leanness and angularity and the way it viciously snaps… but James Brown's baselines were fat, full, deep and upfront in the mix even if they were not acting as a lead voice.

That's why I think James' soul was more "heavy" than "hard."

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>mainly because I don't really subscribe to the notion that
>Sly introduced the upfront bass, or that it even became the
>norm after "Thank You"… At least not in the way that I am
>thinking about it.
>
>"Thank You"'s bass is in the forefront as a lead voice… It's
>basically playing the role that a rhythm guitar would play in
>a conventional song. But the bass isn't "heavy"… It is "hard,"
>in its leanness and angularity and the way it viciously snaps…
>but James Brown's baselines were fat, full, deep and upfront
>in the mix even if they were not acting as a lead voice.
>
>That's why I think James' soul was more "heavy" than "hard."
>
totally. I think the key ingredient to that hard style is Larry Graham and his slapping technique. He fathered a style of bass playing that would signify funk like the the accent in the guitar signified reggae.

There are other things that funk did to expand itself that James didn't do, but James is still the main guy to think of when the word "funk" is mentioned because he laid down a foundation. A bunch of his band left and joined George Clinton and put a building on top of that foundation, but James was there with his hard hat since day one.


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>There are other things that funk did to expand itself that
>James didn't do, but James is still the main guy to think of
>when the word "funk" is mentioned because he laid down a
>foundation. A bunch of his band left and joined George
>Clinton and put a building on top of that foundation, but
>James was there with his hard hat since day one.

James took it to a further level, though... and then others took it even further

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to hear Kansas City Stomp. KCS was the turn on tuba to upright incidentally. But KC has always been in the shadow of NOLA.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

to hear Kansas City Stomp. KCS was the turn on tuba to upright incidentally. But KC has always been in the shadow of NOLA.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

kind of i guess. but... guitar licks are still signtures of both pieces. the bass' still walk, a little more out but walking none the less. if i hummed the bassline some might be able to recognize it as a james brown type bass, but could they pin it to the song?
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

In fact, most of the guitar in JB's classics are interchangeable since the guitar was there mostly to provide rhythmic texture rather than color.

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c'mon. you know those guitar licks. not disagreeing with your point, but those specific ones.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician." © Miles Davis

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

but then: what voice do the dancers obey in those songs?

Blacks heed the call of the bass...

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

To me main sound in funk is the bass and/or the keyboard (such as the rhodes or arp); but there are funk type bands that never had a keyboard player in them and the same goes for a few that didn't have a bass player.

https://tinyurl.com/y4ba6hog

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& your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."