Having duly warned you of the perils of such dark, arcane knowledge, here's a page of exercises for developing your own “glitch”/Questlove/d'Angelo groove, which, like overly-groomed beards and twee interpretations of 1920s lumberjack clothing, is all the rage with the young people. Seriously, I don't play with people who would be impressed by this; for me this is just for demonstration purposes. If you're going to attempt this in actual music, be aware that the more rhythmic activity in the other players' parts, the more potential for the parts clashing, and you sucking.
Keep the focus on the right hand, and play the left hand softly. After you've learned the exercises, you can start playing all the basic rock beats with this type of swing interpretation— just grab any page of rock beats, like from A Funky Primer or Basic Drumming, if you need to.
There's a new type of drum groove that has been kicking around hiphop circles for a decade or so, with a strangely precise, often bordering on ricky-ticky, half-swing feel. I've heard it called a “glitch beat.” It's a live-drummer version of digitally messed-with, sampled hiphop of the later 90s. Traditionally, with good music, when there is that type of in-the-cracks thing going on, it's just a slightly legato way of playing duple rhythms; we've seen that in Second Line music, and in Tony Allen's Afrobeat drumming. There it's an organic thing, arrived at through natural body motion. This new groove is an imitation of sampled/programmed drumming digitally manipulated by a recording engineer.
When it's done well (see Questlove, Chris Dave) it's based on a five or seven note subdivision, depending on the tempo— I don't know if the players worked it up that way deliberately, but that's what it is. You can hear that in the hihat rhythm when these guys start playing; tap 5lets with a RllRl sticking, and you'll lock with the hihat pretty exactly:
As played live by average-good players, without the benefit of Pro Tools editing and a carefully produced mix, it doesn't sound so hot— to my ears, usually, that is. Here it just creates the effect of the band not locking:
It doesn't help that the tune they're playing is extremely weak— this is a current band from Brooklyn, NY, the epicenter of hip, so they tell me, but anyone who has played for a couple of decades will recognize, and probably had to play some of this ilk of bad guitarist-written fusion tune. It is a thing, and it's not new.
Another video of the group performing in Austria, where the audience is digging it:
For reference, the following is what groove is supposed to feel like in R&B music. These players all know how to play rhythm; the guitarists are true rhythm section players.
The point is not to just be against new stuff, and not to pick on that band— they're doing all the right things, touring and putting themselves forward, and more power to them. The drummer Daru Jones has a real gig with Jack White, and I'm sure he does a great job with it. He was featured in Esquire Magazine, and his future is assured. But we're talking about this rhythmic thing: it doesn't actually work that well outside of a controlled environment. Players who are not absolute monsters should approach it with extreme caution. I would advise using it only to get over with players who think it's hip.
