Let’s Hear It for The Boys

pictured at left is the legendary Les Paul, the inventor of multi-tracking. he may be more known for his solid body electric guitar, but make no mistake, this is what makes him important to modern music for all of us. he is pictured here with his original eight track board built by Ampex in the 50’s. there is no Hank Shocklee without Les Paul…

the other day i was watching a documentary on the copyright issues sorrounding sampling. it was a good documentary, covering a lot of ground that has to do with a lot of today’s problems. they had one particular part about Clyde Stubblefield, “The Original Funky Drummer”. he was the dude responsible for the drum beat we all know too well, “The Funky Drummer”. he was a part of the James Brown band and responsible for the bangin beats behind “Cold Sweat”, “I Can’t Stand It”, and the bonafide bboy classic and one of my favorite records of all time, “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose” (with the notable performance of Bootsy Collins on bass. a lot of greats have palyed with james Brown, even Jimi Hendrix). but as talented as a drummer as he is, and he is a virtual human metronome (i mean, listen to the man hold the tempo and pattern of a complicated drum pattern for FIVE, sometimes EIGHT MINUTES), he alone is not what makes these records the classics that they are. we got to give it to the engineers that sculpted and crafted the sound.

Clyde gave a demonstration of the pattern from “The Funky Drummer” on a set drums sitting in a room. needless to say, altho’ i recognized the pattern, that was NOT the Funky Drummer i sampled with my first Gemini sampler. then, as an engineer myself, it dawned on me that he will never be able to perform that song, except in context with the band. maybe i should say, he can never perform that break. that break is equally the product of compression, reverb, eq and limiting and the particular inexactness of analog machinery that imparts a particular character to whats being run thru it. altho it’s technically called “distortion”, it is a distortion that happens in the harmonics of the music. as a result, it actually makes it more spacious. so it’s a desired distortion, unlike the mathematical certitude of digital audio. that certainty is digital audio’s strength. and it’s weakness.