Ghost notes developer

Ghost notes are currently an extremely hot topic in internet drumming land— it seems funny that there would be so much hoopla about an embellishment, but whatever. I use them all the time in my playing— though less than in the past— they sound cool when you're playing by yourself, and they're one avenue for developing your own sound within a funk style. Just keep them in their proper perspective: playing amplified funk with unmiked drums, nobody's going to hear them. You're better off focusing on the big notes, the notes that are going to project to your audience.

To get these together, follow the David Garibaldi rules: play the ghost notes (in parentheses) very softly— about 1" off the drum, and play the backbeats as rim shots, played in the center of the drum. It takes a little bit of practice totally focused on the dynamics. Play the following patterns at first with hands only, then add the basic bass drum part I've given, then vary your bass drum part to fit around whatever you're doing with your hands. You'll want to be able to do them in a fast James Brown-like groove, or an even-faster Drum & Bass type of thing, but you can also work them up in a slower, swingy-16ths, country/boogie/Rolling Stones-like feel.

So what are these ghost notes? They're soft texture notes filled in with your left hand in the course of playing a normal funk groove. We're reconciling two things— an alternating hand motion:

...with a regular funk groove, with an accent on the snare drum on beats  and 4:

If you put them together, you get this challenging pattern:

Let's eliminate the difficult notes around the 2 and 4— this is most basic, easy way of adding ghost notes without disrupting the overall groove:

More after the break:

Groove o' the day: two by Jabo Starks

Here are two grooves by Jabo Starks, played on James Brown's original soundtrack for the movie Black Caesar. As you already know very well, Starks, along with Clyde Stubblefield, is the drummer most responsible for creating the now-classic James Brown groove— crisp-sounding; generally bright tempos; with texture, in the form of ghost notes on the snare drum; often with one of the backbeats displaced. Drummers have really latched on to the ghost notes thing in recent years, but for a long time, until people started sampling James Brown grooves, they were out of fashion; the thing was to play a strong 2 and 4, and nothing else.

First, “The Boss”, which you might also recognize from the movie Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels:

...and I forgot to include a time signature, but I think you can figure out we're in 4/4. As with much of Brown's stuff, there's a very light swing to the 16th notes. He's playing with a light touch here, while being absolutely solid and grooving— I would try to cop that element.






And here's “Make It Good For Yourself”— if you've listened to much 80s and 90s hip hop, this groove should feel very familiar:

It's easy to make too much out of the ghosted notes, especially on beat 4. Jabo's backbeats are absolutely rocking, but not too loud— again, that kind of touch is worth developing.