Generate Unique Beats With Funk Drum Loops

By Jason Montes


Sometimes it's hard to come up with a fresh, interesting beat. Maybe you need to distance your rhythms from the usual digitally enhanced digital machine sound. Try getting your hands dirty with some funk drum loops.

This sort of pounding, dance floor beat is instantly recognized as the hallmark of many West Coast rappers. From Dr Dre to Coolio, samples pulled from Parliament lend a lazy groove with a hypnotic backbeat. If you want to see people's heads bob like their neck was made of rubber, you need to see what George Clinton was up to in the 1970s.

Parliament is actually one of the best and easiest bands to pull these samples from. Some of the best ones tend to come from the era when Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey played the skins opposite Bootsy Collins' bass.

There are plenty of places to lift good beats from. James Brown is one of the most heavily sampled artists in hip hop, but there are still lots of great cuts to make. Stars of the seventies like Stevie Wonder, Barry White, and Luther Vandross are also great sources.

Bringing this flavor to your beats will be easy. The very nature of them implies that they are wide open, stomping beats with the heavy accents on the one and the three. This is likely to fit anywhere you like. Layer more than one, but do it carefully. Look to the earlier Ice Cube albums for ideas on how to do that.

With all the mechanical rhythm sounds all over the place right now, you can be fresh and exciting by going in the opposite direction. Try out some funk drum loops, and watch the party happen. These samples are still fresh after forty years, and if they are used well they can really drive your beats up over anything the other people are making.




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