I really enjoyed writing about A Funky Primer, so let’s jump to another funk book called Advanced Funk Studies, written by Rick Latham and published in 1980. Much like A Funky Primer, this was one of the first books I went through as a young drummer, although I did not like the experience of this one as much.
At first glance, there appears to be a lot of overlap between the two books, and Advanced Funk Studies is often seen as the next step for a drummer who has already gone through something like A Funky Primer. In some ways, the books are indeed quite similar: they both start with warm-up exercises before presenting patterns that are broken down, then moving on to full grooves.
Compared to A Funky Primer, Advanced Funk Studies seems to be directly channeling the energy of some specific funk/fusion drummers from the 1970s. While there’s no “suggested listening” section, one of the most interesting moments of the book comes in the form of a transcription section, which features grooves/fills/solos from Steve Gadd, David Garibaldi, Harvey Mason, Peter Erskine, Gerry Brown, Paul Leim, Richard Calhoun, and Ed Greene. In addition, the last ~20 pages of the book are filled with written-out drum solos.
Drum books fall on a spectrum. On one end, you’ll find books that seem to explore ideas to an exhausting degree, with endless variations and permutations that can feel tedious and redundant. On the other end, there are books that feel like collections of licks, with no strong method that connects them all together. Good books are somewhere in the middle, but Advanced Funk Studies is unfortunately on the latter end.
Even the introductory exercises don’t have any sort of system that’s easy to follow, and when the book gets to grooving, things aren’t any better. It’s very difficult to pick up on any sort of evolution to the patterns, and there isn’t a coherent difficulty curve in the book. While most of the grooves are in 4/4, there are grooves in 3/4, 5/4, and 7/8 that come out of nowhere without any lead-up or preparation.
There’s a single page of fills that I don’t understand at all — it’s a total hodgepodge, and most of them are pretty unremarkable, save for a beastly nested-tuplet lick. The transcription section is one of the better moments of the book, although the attention that the different drummers get is very uneven, and I think some of them are inaccurate. (I can’t really blame Latham for this; he did all of them more than 40 years ago by listening to either vinyl or cassette.)
The solo section is without a doubt the most fascinating and cogent part of Advanced Funk Studies. The book has ten of them, about 20 to 30 bars long, mostly centered around 120–130 BPM. While they’re interesting to pick apart and play note-for-note, I’m not sure what the overall long-term benefit is. Each solo does follow a discernible motif.
I don’t want to rag on Advanced Funk Studies too much; perhaps the book will at least introduce a drummer to some ideas that could be totally new to them, although there will still be much work to do after the fact.
For instance, there is a discussion about ghost notes, although it’s not to my liking, as the discussion is entirely about ghosting cymbal notes rather than ghosting snare notes, which is all wrong to me. Modern ghost note notation with parentheses is not used; instead, we have an “ghost all non-accented notes” approach, which I don’t dig either. It’s a dated and unclear method, but it still shows up occasionally in the 21st century.
Other ideas include more advanced timekeeping patterns on the cymbal. That is to say, patterns that aren’t steady 8ths or 16ths. A lot of the material also has a linear flair to it, although the book doesn’t use the term “linear.”
I must say, the engraving is very good. It doesn’t look formally engraved; rather, I think Latham did everything with a pen and a straight edge (and maybe some stamps). While the sheets are clean, the notation key is kind of jive:
The noteheads for the open hi-hat and the toms are not good — they look like half notes. It’s another quirk that some people still do this today, but I consider it to be bad practice. I don’t really know why the toms even need special noteheads.
Overall, I’m not a huge fan of Advanced Funk Studies. The book just isn’t very methodical, and it’s tough to evaluate the utility of just chugging through it all as you navigate the exercises. As I said, this book could (at the bare minimum) be the first exposure a drummer may get to these ideas. And truth be told, I sadly haven’t really found an alternative that’s all that much better. I’m somewhat tempted to solve this problem myself… stay tuned for my debut book, Go Funk Yourself. /s
(I’m only half joking.)
