James Brown. Funky Drumming.

Over the past week or so, I've found myself in an obsessive James Brown phase. I realized that, for some dumb reason, I had never bothered to really learn any of the essential JB grooves. After writing some of the drum parts down, I figured I might as well learn the corresponding bass lines as well. Closely listening to the bass and drum parts made me recognize how deeply funky and in the pocket the drums and bass are on these tracks.....hardly a unique revalation, I know. Anyway, Clyde Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks make these beats sound slick and effortless on the recordings, and I found that it was more difficult than I thought to make them sound "correct" (not that I succeeded in doing so). The jazz school grad in me initially wanted to turn this into some academic analysis of which 16th notes contain the most funk, so that I could create a fool proof funk algorithm........I quickly realized that would be wack. Super wack. So, I just decided to  do a lot of playing along, on both bass and drums, to just absorb the feel in a more organic way. I made a split screen video of me playing both parts together.....excuse the terrible filming and amateur iMovie editing. Here it is:

And here are the transcriptions. Have fun with them.