As I was trolling around YouTube for vids related to clav playing, I stumbled across a video of a dude who goes by the name Funkscribe. He was examining the multitrack master of Stevie Wonder’s song “Superstition”.
That vid (which is instructional as it reveals the crazy number of tracks Wonder put down) led me to some of the vids that Funkscribe has posted. His improvisations using vintage keyboards are sick, and they were instrumental in inspiring me to add some schtanky tracks to some upcoming DD69 songs.
We’ve been trying to forge ahead with a new album in less than a decade. We’ve got a batch of songs that we’re digging, but some of them were missing something, at least in my opinion. After I watched Funkscribe’s videos I realized that we needed to lay some schtank on those tunes.
I don’t have all of those vintage keyboards that my man FS does, but I can get close: I have an old E-MU Vintage Keys rackmount module that has some tasty (and schtanky) samples of vintage keyboards from Moog to Mellotron to Prophet. I fired it up and tweaked a few sounds out so I could drop some funkiness into the DD69 mix.
The results have been superb. Our recordings are getting closer than ever to the funkiness we always talk about. I’m indebted to Funkscribe. That’s one of the high points of the Internets – people who have never met can inspire each other to new funky heights.
Thanks Funkscribe.
Check one of his vids below, and prepare to be funkified.
2 comments
Yo man! Thanks for checking out my videos- it means a lot that people are into the sounds. Peace!
Right on brother. It’s cool to find contemporary inspiration. By the way, what are you using for your vocoder funkiness? I’m wanting to get some of that action going in our tunes.