Bass & Drum: Building Rhythm Section Vocabulary*

by Rod Goelz

We all know the musician who’s pretty good in one particular style (maybe one particular artist), but when you take him out of that narrow focus, and that musician seems voiceless and often one-dimensional sounding. Typically when musical change occurs by one or more of the other band members, this type of musician doesn’t know how to respond to these musical changes. This inability to react to the music that surround this musician dictates the level that musician will rise to. The following discussion will focus improving the bass player/drummer partnership, hopefully creating an elastic ability to react to musical change seamlessly… without painJ

A BIGGER Vocabulary

I think the best way to better your abilities both as a bass player/drummer AND rhythm section partner is to learn many different rhythm section languages. The history of popular music is filled with different approaches of bass player/drummer interaction. In learning different rhythm section styles, you’ll learn different ways to groove (straight, swung, double-time, half-time, funky, laid back, minimalist, rock solid, etc.) as well as learn to create with different types of rhythms (triplet, 8^th & 16^th note rhythms). As a bass player, you’ll learn to create over many different types of chord progressions, using varied ways to create your improvisations (scalar, chordal, intervallic, chromatic, rhythmic, etc.).

Rhythm Section Types

• Traditional Rock—straight 8^th feel, lots of pedaling (bass player).
• Green Day, Metallica
• Baion—bass and bass drum connection, the Latin dotted quarter/8^th rhythmic combination is found in nearly every style of popular music.
• Traditional
• Shuffle—many different kinds of shuffles, mostly based of the triplet rhythm/feel; two basic approaches worth checking out are the “Chicago” Approach (in the song “Some Kind Of Wonderful”), and Jazz Approach (walking bass).
• Chicago Shuffle (ala “Some Kind Of Wonderful”)
• Jazz Shuffle (ala “Killer Joe”)
• Motown—The “Funk Brothers” (the Motown studio musicians) were one of the tightest rhythm sections around. Motown studio bassist James Jamerson was the first master of the electric bass… showing us bass players what the instrument was capable of.
• Straight Motown Feel
• Straight Motown Feel w/ double time bass line
• Afro Cuban and the Motown Sound
• “I Heard It Through The Grapevine (G. Knight & The Pips)

• Funk—again, there are many varieties of FUNK, all of which are worthy. Check out the many James Brown rhythm section configurations; P-Funk, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, Tower Of Power, etc.
• Sex Machine
• JAM
• New Orleans—this style of music is heavy on the snare drum… and very syncopated…but very cool. Check out The Meters, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Dr. John, etc.
• New Orleans “Bo Diddley” Variation
• Jazz—basic jazz grooves are usually based off the triplet rhythm; in traditional jazz, the bass player “walks”
• Reggae—Marley, etc. Laid back feel that has to be experienced to be understood. Listen to Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster…”
• Blues (and the 12-Bar Blues Chord Progression)—a musical link found in all styles of music. Musicians make use of this progression as a tool in learning how to speak in the many different languages covered in this clinic.
• Rockin’
• Shuffle
• Jazz
• Motown
• Funky
• Latin—many different styles
• Bossa Nova
• Samba
• Afro Cuban Varations
• “Third Stone From The Sun” (Hendrix meets Galactic)

* This CLINIC conducted was conducted at Educational Musical Services (in Manchester, PA), as part of their Rhythmfest 2004 Event. The drummer who invited me in to share in this “rhythm section” discussion was Tony Aguirre.