Transcription: Mickey Roker - Essence

Here's Mickey Roker playing behind Donald Byrd on Essence, from Byrd's record Electric Byrd. It's vibey modal thing, in a slower 4/4 swing feel. It looks busy on the page, but this is mostly about groove, which is exceedingly deep. Tempo is about 88 bpm. 

I've gone a little nuts with the ghost note notation, but it's accurate— a lot of the comping activity is very soft. We can assume he's feathering the bass drum most of the time; I've only notated it where it's audible. Often with Roker that bass drum and snare drum are layered— he plays more unisons between the two drums than some of us do. 

In the comments someone mentioned an interview with Roker by Ethan Iverson, where he mentions the bass drum: 

EI:  When you are playing this fast, are you feathering the bass drum?

MR:  I almost always pat the bass drum because that’s the bottom of the drums.  I’m from the old school.  We used to play with no bass player and you had to pat the bass drum.  I am so used to that.  Sometimes I get too rambunctious with it but I don’t want to sound like Papa Joe Jones.  That’s why I like cats like Vernel Fournier. Nobody played that bass drum like that guy, you can hear it all the time. Some drummers tune their bass drum at too high a pitch and you can hear it but it gets on your nerves.  But if it is down and damp, it don’t get in the way of the bass player.

EI:  Do you think you are feathering here?

MR:  (listens to track [Three Little Words from Sonny Rollins On Impulse!]) No, I am not playing it here. Well, it’s hard to do that on something fast. You can’t do that on something that is extremely fast, unless you are playing without a bass player. (Listening to Sonny solo) Bad dude. Sonny Rollins!

His sound has a lot of bottom, with a large, muffled bass drum with a soft beater. The snare drum is tuned high and crispy. He's using a smaller, medium weight ride cymbal. Toms are medium size, with the top head tighter than the bottom... if you were wondering what that sounds like. 

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Transcription: Billy Higgins - Blackjack

Billy Higgins playing on a funky vamp with some kicks in it, on Blackjack, from Donald Byrd's album of the same name. It sticks with the rhythm figure all the way through, and Higgins plays a lot of different stuff over it, rather than a repeating groove, so we get to see how he handles that. 

The transcription starts at 1:50, with the trumpet solo, ends at the piano solo. Tempo is 174, but the vamp suggests a half time feel. 

Here's the rhythm figure he's playing off of, usually filling to set up the syncopated accents starting at the beginning of the second measure, or on beats 4, 3, or 2 of the first measure:

It can make you kind of tense vamping relentlessly like this, if you don't vibe your way into some kind of groove with it. Which is not easy to find all the time. 

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Groove o' the day: Harvey Mason - Slop Jar Blues

Here are some fairly basic funk grooves, which I'm really only posting as an excuse to get you to listen to this track, and the way the drummer plays it. The tune is Slop Jar Blues, from the 1973 Donald Byrd album Black Byrd, with Harvey Mason on the drums.

A couple of minutes in he gets a little heavier with the bass drum. The hihat with the tenuto mark is slightly less open than the open note at the end of the measure:

This figure happens many times throughout the tune, and he plays it the same way every time, with a rather complicated sticking— try RRLB RLBR— B meaning 'both', with the right hand on the cymbal. Or whatever works for you.

But never mind that, just listen to the way he plays— between this and the Ndugu Leon Chancler transcription last month, this is everything you need to know about playing slow funk. At this tempo you have to be very deliberate in your rhythm, especially the fills. There's a certain uniformity of volume— everything's pretty big and solid, though he's not playing especially loud. He's not getting that slamming, hard sound a lot of drummers today somehow associate with being “funky”— none of that “crack” to the snare drum that is so cherished now. A drummer who really got into this school of playing would sound pretty unique today, and people would really be into playing with him or her.