Practice loop: The Meters / Cabbage Alley

Take care of your mental wellbeing and forget this political nightmare for awhile, with this cheery practice loop, sampled from Cabbage Alley by The Meters. Excellent for use with this late plethora of funk materials. Also take a look at my transcription of the breakdown from this tune.

Practice loop: The Meters / Doodle-Oop

Oh, and you might want a slightly slower loop to hang with the sixtuplets on the new page of funk stuff, so here's some more Meters. The tempo is about 90 BPM, and the NOLA-style swing feel si happening, but it'll work well with those pages. The drummer, our beloved and revered Zigaboo Modeliste, is playing a combination of street beat and funk groove, so this will also be great for working on those recent street beat methods I posted.

Practice loop: The Meters / The Same Old Thing

A new funk practice loop, sampled from The Same Old Thing, by The Meters. Use this with these two recent pages, or any of my funk stuff. The tempo is about 106 bpm. The 16th notes are swung slightly, in that New Orleans kind of way; don't worry about copying it, just listen and play and you'll start to acquire it.

Grooves o' the day: all the grooves from Look-ka Py Py

Let's do a whole record for the groove of the day— and a very famous one at that: Look-Ka Py Py, by The Meters. The drummer is Zigaboo Modeliste, the New Orleans funk legend. We've covered him pretty heavily here, but if you don't know who he is, get thee to the archives, and go buy a bunch of Meters albums— don't think, just do it.

Mr. Modeliste is still actively performing, and you can follow him on Twitter to find out what he's up to, and to go see him play.

I see a couple of typos as I'm going to post this. Worst of all, I've left out the tune Rigor Mortis altogether [UPDATE: wtf, also Dry Spell!]— oops! I'll fix those for the book, I guess. Most of these examples give a pretty accurate picture of what's played on the actual tune; most grooves are not heavily varied, and fills are generally pretty sparse. On The Mob the A sections are completely improvised and non-repetitive, in the broken-up style of the example I transcribed— I'll write out the whole drum part soon. One notation you might wonder about are the tenuto marks on Yeah, You're Right. Those are slightly open hihat notes— just a little sizzle without being a full-fledged open. Accented snare drum notes are solid rim shots.

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Audio is after the break:

Groove o' the day: Zigaboo Modeliste — Keep On Marching

Here's a funky Second Line groove from Zigaboo Modeliste, on the song Keep On Marching, from the Meters album Good Old Funky Music.

Play the open hihat strongly— it helps if you have some pretty light hihats, as Modeliste does. On the downbeat of beat 3, he plays the hihat both with his hand and with his foot, or sometimes just with his foot— the sound is a little different, and accents that note a little bit.

Here's what he plays in the first measure of the recording, which you can use as a fill. The tenuto mark on the & of beat 3 indicates a half-open hihat.

The track:

Groove o' the day: Idris Muhammad on Grant Green's Carryin' On

There's some nice late-60's funk drumming by Idris Muhammad (named Leo Morris at the time) on Grant Green's Carryin' On album. This is from the James Brown tune I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothin':

That same little linear pattern in the last half of the measure happens again, with some elaboration, on the Meters tune Ease Back, from the same record. This has a little more of a New Orleans feel:

During the intro play the first measure only, with a buzz roll on the & of 4. The snare hits are at a fairly uniform volume, with a slight emphasis on the 2 and 4 & in the first measure.

Audio after the break:

Groove o' the day: Jungle Man

Another Zigaboo Modeliste groove today, from Jungle Man on The Meters album Rejuvenation:

Half-swing the 16th notes-- listen to the track to hear the correct interpretation.

YouTube audio after the break:

Groove o' the day: Zigaboo Modeliste - People Say

Today's groove o' the day is Zigaboo Modeliste's part from People Say, by The Meters:

The 16ths are half-swung in the New Orleans style ("in between the cracks", as Stanton Moore calls it). Listen to the recording for variations in the bass drum part- often he'll add it on the "&-a" of 1 of the first measure. The variations in the hihat part are basically optional- it would sound just as good with 8th notes all the way through.

YouTube audio after the break:

Transcription: Zigaboo Modeliste - Good Old Funky Music

This is a permanent favorite of mine- Good Old Funky Music by the Meters, with Zigaboo Modeliste on drums. Not a single day goes by without me hearing this internally at some point. There is another version of this floating around; this is the shorter of the two- here they've edited out half of the intro, and I like it a lot better- it puts the Hawaii 5-0 fill right up front.

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YouTube clip and a few notes on the transription after the break:

Transcription: Zigaboo Modeliste - Stay Away

Another older transcription, Zigaboo Modeliste on Stay Away by the Meters. This one has a lot of fills.

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