What Is Funk Music? The Basics of Playing Funk as a Band

Born in African American communities in the US in the mid-1960s, funk is a style that puts rhythm ahead of melody. Funk songs often sit on one chord for a long time. The real story is told by drums, bass and guitar locking their rhythms together. It's related to soul, R&B and jazz, and counts as an ancestor of plenty of other styles, including disco and hip hop.

The band plays a funk tune for the first time. Everyone's hitting the right notes, the tempo's right. But it just doesn't sit, it doesn't make you move like the record does. Listen to the original again and the difference is obvious: on the record, everyone plays less, and the gaps between the notes are the song.

Where did funk come from?

James Brown's name comes first when people talk about how funk was born. Brown moved the emphasis in his songs onto the first beat of the bar. That first beat, which funk players call "the One," became the point where the whole band meets. "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," released in 1965, is often named as one of the first examples.

"Cold Sweat," recorded in 1967, is sometimes called the first funk song. Brown wrote it with Pee Wee Ellis, and Clyde Stubblefield played drums. Talking about "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," Brown said of the bass that it never moves, it stays right where it is. That's the foundation of funk: a steady, strong floor that everything else turns around.

Which bands shaped funk?

After James Brown, funk grew in different cities with different colours. A few names that stand out:

Band	Where and when	What they brought
Sly and the Family Stone	San Francisco, 1966	Mixed rock and soul into funk. One of the first major US bands with a lineup mixed in race and gender. Bassist Larry Graham is considered a pioneer of slap.
The Meters	New Orleans, 1965	Brought New Orleans street-parade rhythms into funk. A lean, spacious, very tight band sound.
Parliament-Funkadelic	Led by George Clinton	Took funk somewhere new with big stage shows and long, dense arrangements. 1975's "Mothership Connection" is one of their best-known albums.
Tower of Power	Oakland, 1968	A tight, powerful horn section that also played on other artists' records.

Where should you start listening?

Before you play funk, get your ears used to it. These records from the bands above make a good starter list:

• James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "Cold Sweat": Listen to how the One gets hit and how the bass stays put.
• The Meters, "Cissy Strut" (1969) and "Look-Ka Py Py" (1970): Notice how tight four people sound with so few notes.
• Sly and the Family Stone, "Stand!" (1969): Listen to what the bass and vocals are doing.
• Tower of Power, "East Bay Grease" (1970): Follow the horn section's short, tight phrases.
• Parliament, "Mothership Connection" (1975): An example of long, layered arrangements.

Following one instrument at a time each time you listen teaches you far more than taking in the whole thing.

What makes a song funk?

A few features are enough to recognise it:

• The One: The first beat of the bar is hit hard. However loose the rest of the band gets, everyone meets on beat one.
• Sixteenth-note feel: Each beat is split into four, and the rhythm is built on those small pieces. Even at a moderate tempo, the song feels busy and tight.
• Syncopation: Accents that land between the beats instead of where you expect them. It's what makes funk swing.
• The one-chord vamp: A vamp is a section that repeats over one chord or a short chord sequence. In funk it can run for minutes.
• Space: Every instrument plays in its own slot, sparingly, right on time.

What does each instrument do in a funk band?

In funk, every instrument has its own place in the rhythm, and those places mesh together like gears.

• Drums: Very quiet hits called ghost notes get scattered between the strong ones. You barely hear them, but they make the texture of the groove.
• Bass: The instrument that carries the One hardest. In slap technique, the thumb strikes the string and the index finger pops it, giving the bass a percussive sound.
• Guitar: Muted strums matter as much as the chords. The strumming hand never stops its sixteenth-note motion, letting the strings ring where the sound should come and hitting muted strings everywhere else.
• Keys: Short, punchy chords that fill the gaps the guitar leaves.
• Horns: Short phrases played together instead of long melodies. These hits often land with the drums.

Why does playing less work better in funk?

If every instrument tries to fill every sixteenth note, the sound turns to mush fast. The secret to tight funk is everyone taking a different piece of the rhythm. The drums fill one spot, the bass another, the guitar a third. Where one player drops out, another plays.

So in funk, the question isn't "what can I play here?" but "who's playing here?" That partnership between drums and bass is what creates groove.

How do you rehearse funk?

The most effective way to get funk sitting as a band is to build it in layers:

1. Drums and bass first. Get the One and the main groove locked between the two. Everyone else listens.
2. Then guitar. Once drums and bass are sitting, the guitar finds its own gap.
3. Keys and horns last. They fill the spaces that are left.
4. Sixteenths on the metronome. Practising with the click set to sixteenth notes at a slow tempo teaches you to put syncopation in the right place.
5. Slow the record down. To hear exactly what the guitar or drums are doing in fast sixteenths, a tool that slows audio without changing pitch helps.
6. Memorise the hits and stops. The places where the band hits or stops together are the moments that grab the most attention in funk. They need to be spot on.

To keep a long one-chord vamp alive, play with dynamics. The band can drop right down in one section and then open up all at once. That keeps the song moving even while it sits on the same chord.

Is there funk in Turkish music?

Funk's influence reached Turkey too. You can hear traces of it in Anatolian rock and pop records from the 1960s and 70s, and compilations released abroad in recent years have brought those records back to light. For the era when the bağlama met the electric guitar, see what is Anatolian rock.

If you want to dig into funk's roots, the blues that soul and R&B grew from is a good place to start. What is 12-bar blues is the first step on that path.