Funkiest 3/4 ever..

Stickman

Silver Member
I had to learn the drum part for Joe Cocker's version of 'A Little Help from my Friends'.. and was blown away by the funky waltz beat the drummer played. Never heard a funk-rock waltz before like it.. I actually count it in 6/8 but YMMV. Just check out the opening intro section, beat inversions, offsets, offbeats.. yadayada

https://youtu.be/Z9zGP1FMZ60

In any case, I had to find out who played it;
BJ Wilson from Procol Harem.. with Jimmy Page on guitar.
Apparently Led Zepplin back in the day offered him the drum chair, but he turned it down and John Bonham took it. Sadly, he passed away from an overdose in 1988.
 
I'd count 6 too. The snare is on 4 so counting 3's can get confusing.

Other than that, though. Pretty standard on the drumming front. You want some funkier 3's? Cause we can give you some funky 3's. Soon you'll be digressing into my world of 2 time punk or Bermuda's 2 polkas!
 
I had to learn the drum part for Joe Cocker's version of 'A Little Help from my Friends'.. and was blown away by the funky waltz beat the drummer played. Never heard a funk-rock waltz before like it.. I actually count it in 6/8 but YMMV. Just check out the opening intro section, beat inversions, offsets, offbeats.. yadayada

https://youtu.be/Z9zGP1FMZ60

In any case, I had to find out who played it;
BJ Wilson from Procol Harem.. with Jimmy Page on guitar.
Apparently Led Zepplin back in the day offered him the drum chair, but he turned it down and John Bonham took it. Sadly, he passed away from an overdose in 1988.

B.J. Wilson is one of my favorite drummers. Wish he could have stuck around.
 
The Beatles never wrote a song in 3/4

I would count this Cocker version in 12





Bernard Purdie... mmmmmmm sorry- RINGO played it in 4/4
 
Re: Funkiest 6/8 ever..

Ha.. although I count it in 6/8 I was referring to it as a 3/4 waltz as an inside joke to myself (haha - I kill myself sometimes!)... let me explain;

I had to play a wedding and the client asked the bandleader for 'lot's of waltzes' for the older folks. So our bandleader interpreted that as 3/4 waltzes.. and we proceeded to quickly learn a bunch of horrible songs in 3/4. It turns out.. the bandleader assumed the client knew what he was talking about (NOT).. what he meant by 'waltzes' was SLLOOOOOWWWW songs! So..we could have played any of the millions of great slow 4/4 tunes, instead of sounding like an oompah band!

I've always found pure 3/4 time signatures pretty limiting and difficult to come up with cool variations.. well I can anyway.. but the opening intro of the Joe Cocker piece gave me a whole bunch of ideas that I can use if it ever comes up again.
 
The Beatles never wrote a song in 3/4

I'm not sure how accurate that statement is but they did write a few bars of 3/4 in a 4/4 song. In "We Can Work It Out" (I think that's the title) there's 4 bars of 3/4 on the lyric "for fussing and fighting my friend"
 
Man.. i love cocker at woodstock... I have never been THAT stoned.. let alone that stoned and vertical...
 
We play this weekly, and I count it in 6.

F
 
I'm not sure how accurate that statement is but they did write a few bars of 3/4 in a 4/4 song. In "We Can Work It Out" (I think that's the title) there's 4 bars of 3/4 on the lyric "for fussing and fighting my friend"

You mean Ringo wrote those parts in 3/4 and then Paul explained to him they were just 1/4 note triplets right?
 
The subject wan't what Rings played during the 3/4 section, the subject was the 3/4 time in general.
 
Back
Top