Go-Go

What it is

Chuck Brown's problem in mid-seventies Washington was that people left the floor between records. His answer was to stop finishing songs: keep the groove running, talk over it, call the crowd back, and slide into the next tune without a gap. That structural decision produced the rhythm. A beat designed to run for forty minutes has to have enough happening in it to stay interesting, so the percussion section grew until congas, timbales and cowbells were carrying more of the bar than the kit was. Trouble Funk, Rare Essence and E.U. took it further, and the city kept the style almost entirely to itself for thirty years, which is part of why it sounds like nowhere else.

What it sounds like

Live band, loud room, and a percussion rack louder than the drums. Timbales and roto-toms crack across the middle of the bar, congas fill the gaps, cowbells mark the pocket. The kit itself is fairly plain: a thumping kick, a hard snare, and a hi-hat that mostly ticks. Over the top there is an organ or a rhythm guitar chopping, horns, and a lead voice that is talking as much as singing. Go-go was captured live on cassette more often than in studios, so the reference recordings carry crowd noise, distortion and a mix that changes when someone moves a microphone.

Key elements

• The pocket beatSwung sixteenths, a syncopated kick, and the snare answering itself on the and of 3 before the hard hit on 4. Chuck Brown's band called it the pocket and used it for four decades.
• Percussion over kitTimbales and congas carry the bar and the kit supports them. If the percussion lane is quieter than the hi-hat, the balance is wrong.
• Heavy swingAround 0.57. Enough that the offbeat sixteenths lope audibly, which is what separates go-go from every straight funk record made at the same tempo.
• Sparse hi-hatDownbeats and the a of each beat, nothing else. The percussion rack already occupies the top of the mix and a busy hat would fight it.
• No endingsThe groove runs between songs with the band vamping and the lead voice working the room. Arrangements are transitions rather than beginnings and endings.

How to get them

• Set the swing firstPut the groove at 0.57 before writing anything. Every part gets played against that feel, and adding it afterwards produces a straight beat with a wobble on top.
• TimbalesTwo pitches, high and low, panned about 30 percent apart. Program hits on the and of 1, the e of 2, the a of 2, the and of 3, the e of 4 and the a of 4, between 54 and 74.
• SnareA hard hit on 4 at 114 and a slightly softer one on 2 at 106, with a third snare around 70 on the and of 3. That middle hit is the most recognisable thing in the pattern.
• Congas underneathA second hand-drum layer under the timbales playing straight offbeat eighths, mixed twelve decibels down. It thickens the rack without adding anything you can pick out.
• Print the roomRun the drum and percussion busses through one compressor together, hard, at 6 to 1, and put crowd noise low in the mix. Go-go on a clean grid sounds like a demo.

Reference points

Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, E.U., Junk Yard Band, and the Liaison and TTED catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.