O.K. so I'm just trying to get my mind around this and my friends are arguing with me.

When a drummer plays in the pocket (John Blackwell and his father) it means that no matter what tangent the song goes into, he will always be in the original groove.

Am I wrong in this understanding of what "in the pocket" means?


idiot speller - Edit
[This message was edited Wed Dec 3 9:33:01 PST 2003 by Slave2daGroove]

my understanding of "in the pocket" or "fat-back"

That no matter what you do on the set you always emphasize the 2 and 4 or the 1 and 3. This is the responsibility of the drummer to keep everyone in que.

Example 1: I can be doing some crazy stuff on the high hat or the ride but my foot is always kickin the 1 and 3 and my snare will always strike on the 2 and 4.

Example 2: The snare never deviates from the 2 and 4 and everything else is up for grabs.

Example 3: I can be jazzin up some groove with my left and right hand as well as my kick drum foot. BUT! my high hat foot is hittin like a clock on the 1,2, 3 and 4.

Just about all of Prince's music the drums are on the 1 and 3 or the 2 and 4. Especially those annoying handclaps!

This way, The guitarist can go for a pee break and the bass player can go get the band another round of beer while the keyboard guy does his solo and when they come back they know EXACTLY where come back in without missing a beat.

FUNK music is almost always "fat back"
[This message was edited Wed Dec 3 9:52:04 PST 2003 by yamomma]

See related link http://davidwatson.org:80...2003/06/18

Wed, 18 Jun 2003
Funk In A Nutshell


I've been watching all this talk about funk on Sam Ruby's weblog and while it's catchy, I thought it might be useful to explain the somewhat intuitive, but elusive nature of the word funk. Of course, I am a musician. You would expect me to say something like this. Worse, I am a drummer. That makes me a weird musician. So here goes:

When we look up funk in the dictionary, what we find isn't exactly elucidating.

An earthy quality appreciated in music such as jazz or soul.

Uhh, yeah. No words could adequately explain what 30 seconds of George Clinton would hammer home. So what is it that makes funk, or makes music funky, or so special and different from any other music?

The essence of funk lies in the art of surprise. When we say that something is funky we're really saying that it's surprising - in an odd, paradoxical sort of way. Funk music does this with patterns.

We have a strong psycho-acoustic tendency to expect a pattern to repeat. A drummer creates funk by introducing a pattern - a bar of music - something as simple as...

boom thwack boom thwack

and then introducing a variation in the pattern:

boom thwack boom thwack boom thwack boom (space) TWHACK (space) boom thwack boom thwack boom thwack boom (fill) (REPEAT)

It's that space, the resultant displacement of the beat, and the recapitulation of the original beat, that makes it funky - surprising, titillating. The mind begins wondering what the next surprise is going to be. The mind feeds off of these surprises. The better the drummer, the funkier the variations, the greater the effect.

This has been taken to extremes by practitioners such as Dave Weckl with Chick Corea's band. Dave developed a system of displacing beats such that it sounded as if the meter had changed but the reality was that Dave was playing his own psychotic boom thwack against the band while they were still a half beat or so behind him. This created some really wacky funk, comprehensible mostly by people who are into jazz fusion. Dave would then shift back the time in a few bars and the listener's mind would go "AH HA! I get it."

That's not the whole story. The very timing of beats within funk music is also very important. That is, if the time is constant, as if set by a metronome, each player in the band is not playing to exactly the same metronome. Rather, there are extremely slight variations in the placement of each player's relative time that cause the music to sound the way it does. This becomes very important in the relationship between the bass and the drums. Musicians refer to this as the pocket or being in the pocket or having a deep pocket. Similar effects can be observed listening to Ringo Starr play with the Beatles.

In this way, virtually any music can be funky by introducing the art of surprise and some tricky timing. So there you have it, the essence of funk in one easy lesson. If it were only that easy to do!

I saw Dave Weckl at a Mars Music "Drummers night out" clinic 2 or 3 years ago.

Very informative clinic

Great stuff! http://216.247.68.195/0602/video.htm

In my opinion/experience:

"In the Pocket" is the opposite of flashy. A drummer who plays in the pocket is a drummer who has solid time, solid groove without an ugly business.

I've played with both kinds. My experience is that a schooled drummer (schooled in all styles) equates funk with jass fusion - busy and full of flair. An "in the pocket" drummer or bass player are the opposite - closer to what you said slave - they'll set up the pattern and stick to it, allowing the lead instruments to add the flash and panache.

"Pocket" indicating a small area, sonically.

So well. there you go. Thirty different explanations, and they're ALL different answers. Good luck.

Thanks all. I'm less confused.

YoMamma, you've just given me a goal.

Its all related to a drummers often forgotten purpose in the band, time keeping. To play in a pocket means to play a very tight groove that doesnt speed up or slow down.

The phrase playing in a pocket is mainly used in funk but Ive heard it in most styles of music that require nothing more than simple time keeping. To play in the pocket is to play a good time keeping groove, to play out of the pocket is to either lose the time or to play a groove where the time is a little difficult to hear because the beat is too complicated (going back to otan's comment about drummers confusing funk with jazz/fusion.

Ive always found that being a good player is about listening & being sensitive to whats being played by the rest of the band. If the guitar player is about to do a solo, the last thing he needs me to do is start playing a solo myself lol, he wants to hear that pocket

?uestlove from the Roots (who has done tons of studio and tour playing with other artists) is a great example of an in the pocket drummer.

ClimaxSt said:

Hell yes he is. Dudeman is badass.

Playing in the pocket, as I understand it means that you can give different feels to a beat without speeding up, slowing down or loosing the groove. Zigaboo Modeliste out of the Meters can play a very loose, swinging, lazy beat yet it's still right on the money, because he's always in the pocket - geddit?

Yeah, I feel like I'm right in my understanding.

Thx Cloud & Hec