Re: [Harp-L] FEELING THE GROOVE and reflecting it physically

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A few years ago the word 'beat' suddenly came to mean 'rhythm pattern.'  "I 
like so and so because he makes such good beats..."  Though I love 
witnessing language morph over time, it is the kind of thing that makes 
older people cranky, and I'm older people.  In any event, I'm gonna use the 
old meaning of the word 'beat', as in pulse.  It is the thing you hear when 
you turn on the metronome.  In my lexicon it is not the groove, it is not a 
rhythm pattern, or at least not a very good one.

I love using my metronome, I practice with it daily, but it will not teach 
anyone to feel a groove.  It WILL teach you to feel the beat, though, and 
to express it.

(I urge every musician who doesn't use a metronome to run out and buy one 
before finishing reading this post, and start practicing with it every day 
until it is easy and fun to use.  It will not be at first, but will become 
so, and along the way you will develop a super-strong sense of time.  This 
is the simplest thing you can do to seriously improve your musicianship.)

All grooves are rhythm patterns, but not all rhythm patterns are 
grooves.  A groove is a rhythm pattern that you can feel, and in American 
dance band music that feeling better be enjoyable or your band will be 
mainly gigging in your basement.  (Blues Bands make a species of American 
dance band music.)

Luckily, developing and playing great grooves is something you can get good 
at.  I'll refine my definition further in just a moment.  But first, more 
on The Beat.

Almost all American dance band music is in four-four, four beats to the 
measure.  And music that is danceable places more emphasis on the first and 
third beats or the second and fourth beats.  Most but not all blues places 
its emphasis on the two and the four.  If you watch white people clap to 
the music in the audience of the Grand Ol' Opry, they clap on the one and 
the three, even if the emphasis is on the two and the four.  Go figure.

Rarely does an arrangement go from being a one & three arrangement to a two 
& four.  (The Band does it sometimes, and to greatest effect on their album 
Stage Fright.  But those guys had lived Groove for years at that point, and 
could really monkey with it.)

(A rare instance of emphasis on all four beats is the Steely Dan tune Time 
Out Of Mind, but it's really two grooves combined very craftily, half the 
band playing one pattern and half playing the other.  They were able to 
accomplish this because, like many professional musicians, they have though 
long and deeply about Groove.  It is an endlessly deep subject, as many 
advanced Harp-l players can tell you.)

So, one & three or two & four is the very basis of building a groove you 
can feel.  Any rhythm pattern that makes you feel great, and makes you want 
to dance is a good groove, but it's hard to name a groove that doesn't 
build on either one & three or two & four.

Here's a pertinant story.  In the early 60's Leiber & Stoller wrote and 
produced an incredible record on Chuck Jackson called "I Keep 
Forgetting."  (It was later - um - appropriated by Michael McDonald, whose 
representatives negotiated a deal to split the writer credit with L&S.)  If 
you ever get to hear this song you'll be amazed because it feels so 
unique.  The fact is, L&S were experimenting with building a groove on the 
one & four.  As listening music it is a marvel.

But Chuck Jackson played the record for Smokey Robinson back stage at the 
Apollo and Smokey sadly and kindly told Jackson that though it was an 
incredible song, the record wasn't going to be a hit.  Why?  Because you 
couldn't dance to it.

It wasn't a hit.

In America we mainly feel like dancing when we hear a good groove built on 
the two & four.  That's how most rock & roll and blues is built.  Some 
people build their grooves intuitively, i.e., they have never been educated 
in the subject, but I guarantee you that most of your favorite grooves were 
crafted by people who's entire being is imbued with the subject.

The epitome of beautifully constructed grooves might well be Stax 
recordings.  The drummer on those recordings, Al Jackson, spent his life 
devising delightful - um, groovy - rhythm patterns.  After the Stax 
recording band broke up, he went around the world collecting great rhythms, 
and then went home and developed some of the greatest patterns ever 
devised.  His pattern for Al Green's 'Let's Stay Together' is so great that 
Willie Mitchell and Al Green shared their writer's credit with him.  (In 
the studio, they divided a single drum kit up into two kits and Jackson 
played half the pattern on his half kit and Archie Turner, the regular 
drummer on Al Green's records, played the other half.  Listen to the 
record, you'll hear it and now you know why the drum groove on that 
recording feels so unique.)

So... Feeling the Groove.  That is, grooves you can feel.  If there's a 
rhythm pattern going and you can't feel it, it isn't a groove.  At least 
not for you.  If you play with musicians who already make good grooves that 
make you want to dance while playing, learn from them.  Otherwise, listen 
to the records of the Meters, Booker T and the MG's, Stuff, the Mar-Keys, 
Chess Blues and R&B records, Motown records.  You almost always want to 
dance when you hear those records.  Study the grooves on those records.

Learn to play those grooves on harp.  Learn to play them so that people 
want to dance when you are playing them by yourself.  (Here's where 
metronome practice really comes in.  If your inner metronome (your 'time') 
is mediocre, and it probably is if you don't work with a metronome, when 
you play those grooves you'll see people dance to it for a moment and then 
trail off, bored.  But if you work with your metronome your time will 
become solid and you can play a groove forever and people will just go nuts 
with joy.  You'll be Feeling the Groove.

Now, this doesn't mean you should play all the elements of a great groove 
when you're playing with a band.  Far from it.  The band creates a groove 
where all members play PART of it.  It all locks together and you get a 
band really sounding like a band.  As the groove is being developed, your 
job is to do what is called 'finding the holes', i.e., the places where 
nobody else is playing, and then fill those holes that make the overall 
groove even more delightful and DANCEABLE.

For blues grooves, I'd listen to Tip On In by Slim Harpo.  Simple and 
utterly perfect.  (By the way, played by studio musicians, groove 
experts.)  Slim's the lead instrument, harp so often is, but even so is 
finding the holes.  (Slim's 'Hey Little Lee' is a rare blues built on one & 
three.  Stunning groove.)  Of course the Chess records are just 
unbelieveably groovy, too.

So the first step in all this is definitely Feeling the Groove, but you 
want to develop your playing, learn how to be PART of the groove.  Learning 
how to hear the holes will help you as a soloist, too.  Alot.  There used 
to be a terrific blues jam in a North Hollywood rehearsal studio where I 
must've only played three solos every night.  I was mainly interested in 
working out with the rhythm section and being part of it.  Fantastic 
experience, because the players were so strong, and they were interested in 
finding ways for me to be part of the groove, too.

The thing you can do on your own is identify the grooves on the records you 
love best and learn to play them on harp.  Learn to play them really, 
really well and you'll be on your way to Feeling The Groove in every 
playing situation.

And of course practice with that metronome.

K