P-Funk

What it is

By 1975 George Clinton was running two bands with overlapping members and a rhythm section that had absorbed Bootsy Collins straight out of the JB's. What Parliament and Funkadelic did with James Brown's template was slow it down and open it up. The tempo drops into the low hundreds, the kick stops filling the bar and starts marking three or four places in it, and everything that would have been busy gets handed to a synthesiser bass instead. Bernie Worrell's Moog lines and Bootsy's envelope-filtered Space Bass carry the sixteenth-note motion, which frees the drummer to play heavy and leave gaps. That trade, less drumming and more bass, is why these records sound enormous at a lower tempo than the funk they came out of.

What it sounds like

Big and slightly hazy. Kick and snare are close-mic'd and compressed until they breathe, with a plate on the snare long enough to hear. The hats stay on eighths rather than sixteenths, which leaves a lot of air. Underneath: a Moog bass with the filter envelope wide open, a clavinet through a phaser, horns arranged like a gospel choir, and actual gospel-trained voices stacked six deep. There is usually a conga marking somewhere the kick is not. Everything is wetter than a King Records session, and that is the decade rather than the band.

Key elements

• A kick with gaps in itFour hits a bar, no more. Beat one is enormous, then the lane goes quiet and lets the bass fill the sixteenths instead.
• Eighth-note hatsThe right hand backs off to eighths. Sixteenth hats at this tempo clutter the space the synthesiser bass needs, and records that do it sound like slow funk instead.
• Envelope-filtered bassThe busiest part in the arrangement, played on a bass through an envelope filter or a Moog. It is doing the job the hi-hat does on a James Brown record.
• Congas off the beatHand drums on the a of each beat, on beat 3, and one extra late in the second bar, sitting in the holes rather than doubling anything. They keep the bar moving while the kit rests.
• Chorus vocalsA hook sung by eight people in unison, arranged so the band drops out underneath it. Half the arrangement decisions exist to set that moment up.

How to get them

• KickA large, round kick with the front head on and a blanket inside touching the batter head only. Long decay, weight at 55Hz, and put beat one at velocity 127 with nothing else near it.
• SnareDeep wood shell, tuned mid, into a plate reverb at about 1.4 seconds with the return high-passed at 500Hz. Let the tail run into the following eighth rather than gating it off.
• BassRun a bass into an envelope filter with the sensitivity high enough that quiet notes stay closed and hard notes open all the way. Play sixteenths and let the filter decide which ones you hear.
• ClavinetThrough a phaser at a slow rate, with the pickup switch on both. Play the rhythm a guitar would have played and mute aggressively between notes.
• Bus compressionKick, snare and room into one compressor at 4 to 1, attack around 20 milliseconds, release timed so it recovers by the next eighth. You should hear the room lift after every backbeat.
• Arrange the dropWrite one bar where only the voices and the bass are playing, and put it every eight or sixteen bars. The heaviness of the groove is measured against that hole.

Reference points

Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy's Rubber Band, Bernie Worrell, Jerome Brailey, Tiki Fulwood, and the Casablanca and Westbound catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.