Funk & R&B · gospel · 4/4 straight

Gospel chops

88 bpm
Play it over changesother tunes, key, solo piano or guitar, loop, mixer
16ths

Gospel chops — the drumming of the modern Black church (Aaron Spears, Gerald Heyward, Tony Royster Jr.): a deep R&B pocket that, at any gap, explodes into fills too fast to count, then lands exactly on the next 1.

How it sits: bar 1 is the pocket — kick on 1, the "a" of 1, the "e" and "and" of 3; a cracking snare on 2 and 4 with ghost notes on the "a"s; sixteenth hats, opening on the "and" of 4. Bar 2 keeps the groove for two beats, then the last two beats become a 32nd-note fill: snare, high tom, low tom, with the kick slotted into the run (the hand-hand-foot "linear" style). The piano/organ comps in sixteenths — 1, "and", "a", "e" of 2, "and" of 2 — on rootless ninth voicings over left-hand octaves, a IV–iii–ii–V in F.

Listen for the fill ending on the kick a 32nd before the downbeat, so the 1 lands like a door slamming.

Practice: loop bar 1 until the ghosts are whispers, then play the fill at half speed. Compare gospel-shout, the old-school uptempo version.