House of Drumming.com

Hey,

I am working on James Brown and The Meters grooves from Stanton Moore's book Groove Alchemy
and The Code of Funk from Garibaldi.

I was wondering how you are playing the ghostnotes in grooves like that. David Garibaldi sees them
as part of the groove and is very aware of the placement and volume of ghostnotes. Others just let
their stick bounce to make the groove more round.

Can you guys give me a little insight on how you interpret ghostnotes? And how you might interpret
ghostnotes differently from funk when you're playing shuffles or other styles.

JP

I only kind of let the stick bounce to round out the groove as you say when im playing rock. If I'm playing funk or even my bad attampt at jazz, the ghostnotes are more focused and get more of my attention. They should be integral to the beat. Im not a machine so they dont always come out perfect of course, but especially in funk, the ghostnotes completely change the groove and are important in their placement and feel. Garibaldi is a great person to emulate. He has a great way of testing his ghostnotes with his snare tension which I still use to this day. It was in his Modern Drummer cover story when TOP put out their first full length record with him back behind the drums. If he taps the center of the snare batter head and hears any tone at all his snares are too tight. 95% of the time that works for me.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know but will try it this morning!