The disco beat

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
Here's a beat...that became almost villified after the 70's and hasn't been heard much since....Lately I have been using just the hi hat pattern from the disco beat to great effectiveness (behind soloists usually). It really moves certain things along very nicely. It's a very danceable pattern. I think it's time this banished beat be accepted back into the fray.

I'm assuming that everyone knows the hi hat pattern from the disco beat, but in case you don't, in 4/4 time, the hi hat (with the cymbals open or partially open) is struck with the stick on ALL the eighth note "ands" and closed with the foot on ALL the quarter note downbeats.
 
Oooo, you're a brave man! Daring to introduce something that doesn't require octopus levels of independance. Whilst dodging incoming ballistics, I love the light vibe afforded by constantly opening hats. Like any other beat, it has it's place. Maybe too much of a departure to label it a "money beat" and probably out of place in "jazz" or "Metal". There, that got the essential pariahs out of the way in one sentence. I'm running for cover as I press send.
 
I just unwittingly found myself using it more and more, until the point where I noticed that I was using it fairly regularly, and realized that you don't hear it that much anymore.
It's a fine beat that fell out of favor with the decline of disco. That beat works well in many situations.
 
Actually being able to to keep this (hi-hat) beat going was one of my prouder moments in drumming. Seriously being able to keep a quarter note pulse going with my left foot and still being able to use my other limbs independently made me feel like a drummer for the first time.

Also I believe that the typical disco beat doesn't just involve the constant psshht psssht of the hi hat it also involves four to the floor and snare hits on 2 and 4. Though you don't hear it as often anymore in live situations it's a comon beat used in electronic/dance music.
 
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Sorry guys, can't blame disco for this one. Neil Peart destroyed it with YYZ - long after disco had given up the ghost!
 
I was 12 when the Hustle came out. (I think.) I love disco. It was the R&B of its day. I never understood people's problem with it. I equate it with what happened to the Mullet. It got vilified by the mainstream media, and people just rolled with it to be cool. Come to think of it, guys who were kids during disco probably wore mullets as young men. Too bad the two can't be combined somehow. I see a new band.
 
Love classic disco these days. I didn't care for it back in the 70s because it was the first nail in the coffin for live music in Sydney. The original Lady Marmalade is one of my favourite tracks. Don't accept any of the sterile covers that are out there!

I like playing the standard disco beat and have used it a few times, eg. brief excerpt from a ska-ish track we did in the 80s View attachment busy-disco beat example.mp3 (pls excuse lack of quality - it was recorded at a gig when we were ... not entirely sober)

Here's a little curio - the excellent and hyperactive Prairie Prince's crazy rendition of the disco beat in The Tubes's Slipped My Disco. I think this would qualify as destruction, Mike :)

More destruction ... Terry Bozzio's efforts in Uncle Frank's Dancing Fool.

Whitney, are you making a case for the return of the mullet? I think even the last bastion of that unbalanced hair style, Dave Weckl, has given it away.
 
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and WHO played drums on the Hustle????

..have at it! Give me some guesses!

PS..Lady Marmalade is not a "Disco" record. It's a slammin R&B record, recorded by Herman Ernest in New Orleans..

Since I played with Patti, I can tell you the story. When LaBelle first worked on the record in Philly, it was a more Disco, TSOP record. When they brought down to New Orleans, it got the work over, and turned into the slammin groove that it is...The baddest 8th note groove ever.
 
While in New York City to make an album, McCoy was inspired to record the song after his music partner, Charles Kipps, watched patrons do an elegant dance called "the hustle" at the Adam's Apple club. The sessions were done at New York's Media Sound with pianist McCoy, bassist Gordon Edwards, drummers Steve Gadd and Rick Marotta, keyboardist Richard Tee, guitarists Eric Gale and John Tropea, and orchestra leader Gene Orloff. Producer Hugo Peretti brought in piccolo player Philip Bodner to play the lead melody.
 
You Guys just made me remember why I got into Southern Rock back in the Seventies.
I didn't really like Southern Rock that much, But it was a hell of a lot better than Disco!
 
The disco beat found a new home in INDUSTRIAL MUSIC. Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, RevCo, Skinny Puppy -- they all have used the disco hi-hat to great effect. In that music, it does not sound wimpy!

I use it a lot in my band The Last Dance. In modern European influence rock music, it's pretty common.
 
This place is like a live Q&A encyclopaedia of drumming at times :) Great info, GD. That's the band that ended up being Stuff, wasn't it?

I bought the red album eons ago because Steve Gadd was on it but was disappointed with its blandness. For an excitable young drummer girl this was not the Steve Gadd I marvelled at on Stanley Clarke's Journey to Love or Al diMeola's The Wizard!

Interesting background, Pat. Must have been fun playing with Patti LB. I guess my reference to the tack as disco was guilt by association (and the outfits). A great, great groove.

Lady Marmalade is certainly better than Velveeta (or Kraft Cheddar, as it's called here) - more a Camembert IMO, smooth and creamy. I always thought of disco as a mix of RnB, funk and pop.

Great links, Ken. Yes, I think that would fit in the disco mould. To be fair, there were also some pretty stinky disco tunes out there (which would explain Bob's feelings). I remember that a song called Hot Line used to drive me nuts, but even back then songs like Lady Marmalade, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, Ce Ce Peniston's Finally, Peaches And Herb's Shake Your Groove Thing and Funky Town were solitary guilty pleasures, to be enjoyed with windows shut and blinds drawn once I knew the coast was clear :)

FOTFT, I always thought that disco, along with Krautrock, was the precursor for techno per se, let along industrial. Some interesting info about disco styles.
 
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Sorry Guys, You're still trippin me out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHWeuQyFouo

Great link, Bob (the Bee Gees, that is) lol. Get down and boogie! Beats countrified rock any day IMO :p ... but those tight white pants are a worry. Only budgie smugglers display the male package more explicitly ... for any of you Yanks who don't know the term "budgie smugglers" (ahem)

I detested the Bee Gees during the disco years and now I really enjoy them. I didn't like a lot of the music my current band plays and today I obviously enjoy it. Now I find some of the hard rock I enjoyed back then difficult to sit through. Funny thing, getting old ...
 
As one who loved to dance, I had no problem with Disco. I was no John Travolta but had a ball dancing. As a drummer, I also liked the beat and the drum part. Maybe if I danced as much now as I did then, I would be half of me. Long live Disco.
 
I never wore one of these. How many of you did and will admit it?
Fess up Grunt, LOL
 

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FOTFT, I always thought that disco, along with Krautrock, was the precursor for techno per se, let along industrial. Some interesting info about disco styles.

The thing about disco was that it was gay music. In HS, anyone who looked like John Travolta in SNF before the movie came out would have been deemed gay. But after the movie, that look got you girls.

Disco continued in Michael Jackson's music and Madonna throughout the 80s. It never went away, then you had the house music of the 90s and the Latin music of today, Merengue especially.

Sounds like Pet Shop Boys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFuujExs03A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K7fL5s_1ac

this is Madonna's best tune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4tD8dy9Reg


Is'nt Disco just a velveeta version of R&B? Musicologists?

It's a good question, one that has come up in the classroom, and I can never really answer it. Disco even had a strong pro-black message that empowered the ghetto back in its inception, like in the O'Jays or when you think about some of the songs, I Will Survive or Streetlife. The question being is where does funk end and disco begin? Where does r and b end and disco begin. Where does R and B end and funk begin for that matter ? What is Aretha's Rock Steady, funky R and B? Not always easy questions to answer. Does it have to have a disco beat to be disco?You look at EW&F Let's Groove. Definitely disco, does not use a disco beat, at least not in the drums. The O'Jays Backstabbers or the way Gadd mixes up The Hustle.

What is this? Funky Disco Soul with a little bit of r and b and gospel? Doesn't get any better that this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAa5rP64YbQ

or this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHezTLex2s
 
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