Ralph Rolle occupies one of the grooviest drum chairs on the planet. As well as his job, holding down the foundation for disco/funk legends Nile Rogers & Chic, Ralph has also played for an impressive list of funk, soul, hip-hop artists and beyond, with a CV boasting Stevie Wonder, D’Angelo, Notorious B.I.G., Roger Daltrey, Bono and many, many more.
Ralph Rolle's kit
Thanks to Yamaha, Zildjian and Remo for supplying the gear used in this masterclass.
Drums Yamaha Tour Custom (maple shells) Toms: 10” x 7” 12” x 8”, 16” x 15” Bass drum: 22 x 16” Snare Drum: Yamaha Tour Custom 14 x 6.5”
Cymbals Zildjian: 13” K hi-hats, 10” A Custom Splash, 16” A Custom Fast Crash, 16” A Custom Medium Crash, 17” K Custom Hybrid Crash, 17” K China, 20” A Custom Ride.
00:00now moving on to a funk groove now when I'm playing a funk groove to me the
00:07kick and snare are extremely important but for me the hi-hat makes what the
00:13funk is funky about and I'll show you what I mean so if I'm playing like a
00:18really easy funk groove like this
00:41it's the relationship between the kick snare and hi-hat many times when I see
00:46drummers playing they're just using the hi-hat for time but the hi-hat is
00:52really essential inside of that groove now you can approach playing the snare
00:57with with ghost notes or you could just do a straight two and four but I like
01:03doing the ghost notes mixing in with the hi-hat because it gives it a very cool
01:07sound so I'm gonna break this beat down and just show you the hi-hat first the
01:15accent is on one which is the quarter note two quarter note three four
01:45now I will throw claps in the middle of that too so when I'm doing the claps the
01:54claps now come on the two and the four so hold on
02:00that's
02:27that's one side of the funk now when I was coming up learning how to play I got a
02:37call to play with cameo and I learned something very important when I was
02:41playing with cameo I never made it to the stage with them because the drummer
02:45Rayford Griffin was doing another concert he came back so they sent me home after
02:49three days but I learned a lot and this is what I learned from Larry Blackman he plays
02:56very rude when he's playing funk so you take a song like a single life the hi-hat
03:04that he's playing is just a rude kind of sound he's not using the tip of the stick
03:11he's using the side of the stick to get that sound and he's holding the hi-hats very tight
03:20great sound I love that sound I also use that sound when I'm I'm playing on a hip-hop record I like the way that sounds when it's coming across just holding down the groove so I'll just take the same thing
03:48the same thing
03:55works really well hard-hitting great fat sound so when everybody comes in you're just sitting holding down the groove works really well
Be the first to comment