Here's a cool video of Ndugu Leon Chancler in the studio with George Duke, playing Dukey Stick, which ended up on his record Don't Let Go. They start playing after about 1:45. The way Ndugu counts it in is hilarious:
That's Napoleon Murphy Brock, best known from Zappa's band, doing background vocals here, and Sheila E. (Escovedo at the time) on percussion. The guitarist (“Goin' surfin baby!”) is Charles Johnson who much later became a well known blogger, writing the Little Green Footballs blog— which was very pro Iraq war during the Bush years, and has since become much more politically liberal.
Quick little transcription that includes one of the great opening drum fills ever— Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Man in the Green Shirt, from Weather Report's album Tale Spinnin'. I've just written out the opening, some of the main drum groove, and an ensemble section at about 1:30, and some of the half time groove he plays after it.
The tempo is fast, about 154 bpm. To me that's about the natural tempo limit for 16th note funk/fusion vocabulary— above that it starts sounding silly. For another fusion burner in a similar tempo range see my transcription of Egberto Gismonti's Baiao Malandro, with Roberto Silva on drums.
Ndugu has a couple of extra drums here— a concert tom and a second floor tom. Or a middle tom tuned very low. He's also using a China cymbal, and plays the bell of the ride quite a bit. That opening fill moves from drum to drum in a funny way, assuming the drums are arranged normally, and he's leading with his right hand. I'm not going to worry about how he did it, just note that with that kind of movement it doesn't sound quite like a normal bonehead Hawaii 5-0 fill.
I was expecting him to vary the cymbal rhythm to accommodate the 16th notes he's playing on the snare and bass, but he plays straight 8th notes. Listen beyond the transcription, to how he uses the bell of the cymbal, he'll use it for accents, or go to it for a few bars to build intensity, or play it sort of randomly.
Listening to Ndugu Leon Chancler is always a great lesson in how to play funk, and how to use a set with a lot of tom toms. How to use the tom toms period. I really, really love his playing. This is the opening groove from Yana Aminah, from George Duke's album Feel. This is the intro right after his little lead in; the double bar is where the vocals come in. It's a sort of 70s fusion Latin groove— obviously it's not a traditional clave-based thing.
There are three toms used on this portion of the tune, but you can easily do this with two. I would practice this by making a repeating groove out of each two bars. At the double bar he he catches a crash on 4, and comes back in on 2 in the first measure of the verse. We developed a similar thing in a Mozambique feel on this page, which will be in the new Book of the Blog, as soon as I wrap that up.
The rough rhythmic outline of what he plays for much of the tune:
This is how it goes around here, I get into a certain thing and do only that, and the blog content becomes unbalanced. What do I care, I love Ndugu Leon Chancler's playing. You can take these transcriptions as follow up on the Playing Funk Effectively post— they illustrate some of the things I was talking about there.
This is a short transcription that is mostly groove, plus a few very cool fills, so we'll call it a “Groove o' The Day ENHANCED”, like that's a thing. It's the intro from a tune called Haw Right Now, from Patrice Rushen's Prelusion album. There are a bunch of great LA players on this record.
Chancler does a number of hip things here: the opening fill, the crash on the & of 4 in the middle, the audaciously long fill at the end. All a little unusual in small ways, revealing of the player's intelligence, and COOL-SOUNDING.
I don't know what's going on at the beginning of that ending fill— it looks like it needs to lead with the left, but the last four beats seem to be a mixed sticking with the right hand on the toms, left hand on snare drum. The specifics aren't real important.
I say that every time I post something about him: Ndugu Leon Chancler has to be the player I love the most, for the least exposure to his playing— for years I just had the one record, Reach For It, by George Duke. Here he is playing behind Oscar Brashear's trumpet solo on Blues For Walls, from the Hampton Hawes record of the same name— it should be interesting in light of the funk post from the other day:
The transcription starts at 0:36 in the recording. Swing the 8th notes— they're not triplets exactly, but they're close. And whoops, we're in half time feel, but I forgot to make the time signature 2/2 rather than 4/4. The tempo indicates half notes, anyway...
Ndugu appears to be playing a five piece set here— at least there are no more than three tom toms being played in the course of any one fill. Cymbalwise, there are hihats, ride, crash, and China type. Hihats are played half-open for most of the tune. Where there is an accent on a hihat note, usually the open sound is also a little more pronounced, which makes sense. Watch out for cymbal accents tied across the barline— often he'll crash before the downbeat, and play the bass drum again on the downbeat, but not the cymbal. There are a few filler ghost notes on the snare drum; it's possible he's doing more of that than is written here, and it's just not audible.
Another great quote from Ndugu Leon Chancler, from his 1983 Modern Drummer interview:
“I think the most important thing is your attitude. There were, and still are, a lot of musicians who have more technique than I have, or more talent. But inside the talent is a way of not only knowing how to manipulate it through the ranks to get the maximum out of it, but there is also an attitude that you must project to make people feel you as a person. I very much wanted to get along with everybody, and wanted to add as much as I could to whatever situation.
From the beginning, I wanted to be a workhorse, and I had to work harder at drumming than some of my peers. There was a guy I grew up with who was much more advanced than I was at the time. Right now you can't give him away. Much more talent than I had at the time, but the thing that was missing was the knowledge of how to utilize that in the marketplace of the music and not just in his own home or practice room. He had the talent but it didn't work for him, overall.”
“I think a drummer's success and notability are based on sensitivity as a musician—not as a drummer. I don't even approach myself as a drummer. I'm an orchestrator. The drums are just the instrument I use to orchestrate—paint the picture.
It is very important that you don't lull the people to sleep with one volume or one style. I think the great drummers are the ones who can give you peaks and valleys in their performance. That's very important. Dynamically we're playing an instrument that naturally can be played loud and hard, but the beauty of the instrument is when it's played soft. Just as you can get your point across loud, you can get it across more so soft because you can draw more attention, number one. Number two, dynamics and accentuations are part of music, period. For drummers to think that they can't do that means that they're not total musicians.
It's very important for drummers to vary not only their speed concept, but their volume concept, because those things are synonymous. If you play everything fast— your fill-ins, your beats, a lot of intricate things— you don't give the people time to breathe. If you play everything loud you don't give their ears rest from the volume, so you slowly numb people to what you're doing, which is unfair. So I think that's half of being a drummer. We're not at a point where anybody's playing anything so drastically different. It's just that the style they're using is different. That's all.”
—Ndugu Leon Chancler, Modern Drummer interview, November, 1983
I think we're going to be seeing a lot of Ngugu Leon Chancler around here in the near future. A group I play with plays a lot of 70s funk tunes, so I'm listening to a lot of funk, and Chancler has stood out as one of the most interesting guys to listen to. On the stuff I'm listening to, he makes a perfect balance of playing the funk and the setting, and making a statement as a player. There's a lot to be learned from him about playing funk effectively. So here's a cool little eight bar drum break from 1000 Reds, from the David Axelrod album Seriously Deep. It happens at 1:40 in the track.
On a lot of these 70s records Ndugu sounds like he's playing a normal 5 or 6 piece set with a couple of extra concert toms— either 8"/10" or 10"/12". I don't know if this is the Yamaha set he used later on Billie Jean, but it's at least a similar set-up. I would spent some time learning and messing with each of the 32nd note/sixtuplet fills. Which drum they're on is not important.
Happy holidays everyone. Instead of finishing the other transcriptions I said I needed to finish, I started a new, really long one: Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Earth, from Joe Henderson's album The Elements. I don't have a lot of records with him, but Chancler is one of my favorite drummers in the world— I actually decided that based on his playing on one George Duke record.
This is how you're actually supposed to play funk. It's not loud, there's a strong pulse, the architecture of the rhythm is very defined, he's obviously very alert to what's going on around him— and there's some subtlety to his touch, dynamics, and sound. He's not playing for perfect evenness of volume, or for digital sample-like consistency in the sounds he's drawing from the instrument. Obviously that wasn't a thing yet in 1974, but it's very much a thing now, in certain sectors, to the detriment of people's musicality. I think. In writing this blog I listen to a lot of 70s funk and studio drummers, and there's always way more subtlety than I expect. These guys are listening, and are very attentive to the arc of the melody and the ebb and flow of the groove.
This is in two parts; the rhythm section enters at 0:55, then there's a board fade into an open bass solo by Charlie Haden, and some spoken word stuff, and then the rhythm section is back in at 8:45.
Except for notes in parentheses, everything is at a fairly even volume. I've indicated a few accents, but they're not huge. Housetop accents indicate a rim shot.
I haven't differentiated between cymbals— clearly there's a crash, ride, and swish cymbal. But he doesn't play them strongly, even on the accents, so you can just catch whatever's easiest. He does play the bell of the ride cymbal at one point, which I've indicated. I believe he's using three tom toms.
Things start to get really interesting on page 4— read the rhythms carefully there. I don't know what's up with the measure of 5/4 on the last page. Ndugu went an extra beat in his fill for reason, and everyone was with him.
Here's a very fun tune, with Ndugu Leon Chancler playing an unusual form of an Afro 12/8, on the late, great, George Duke's 1977 album Reach For It. The track is called Omi. There's lots of percussion, and Ndugu mostly provides the foundation, and marks the big phrases. He uses a bell pattern I've never heard anywhere else— I'll start calling it Ndugu's pattern unless anyone can remember hearing it actually being used in Afro-Cuban music. He plays this on the intro:
Here's the variation he plays on most of the tune. The bass drum note at the end of measure is played lightly, often not at all:
From some months ago, here's a transcription of another thing from this record, Watch Out, Baby!, with some great large-drumset funk drumming.
Here's one of my favorite funk drumming performances ever, which I originally transcribed years ago off of my brother's bootleg cassette- Ndugu Leon Chancler playing on Watch Out, Baby! from George Duke's 1977 Reach For It album. Stanley Clarke plays bass on this track, in case you're wondering. Between this and my recent Good Old Funky Music and Use Me transcriptions we've got a veritable school of funk going here. It's got to be a school of funk if they use the word "veritable."
As I mentioned when this piece was a DBMITW, this is is pretty NSFW, so don't play the track loud during tea with the Reverend... save yourself some embarrassment...
Notes:
- There are a couple of tempo changes, the first at the edit at measure 19, the second when the time pulls back a little at measures 72-73, for a new slower tempo at 74.
- Chancler uses a pretty large set here- at least five toms and two bass drums, but you can easily play through this without them.
Here's one of my favorite funk performances ever, by Ndugu Leon Chancler on Watch Out, Baby!, from George Duke's Reach For It. It's pretty NSFW, so you may want to put on the headphones if there are sensitive ears about:
