I couldn't believe my eyes. Rush hasn't been on American television for 33 years and when they decide to break that streak, they pick The Colbert Report. Best question of the interview:

You're known for some sort of long songs. Have you ever written a song so epic that, by the end of the song, you're actually being influenced by yourself at the beginning of it because it happened so much earlier in your career?

So here's a little Friday afternoon treat for you. Enjoy!

While traveling last weekend, a good friend recommended I give Coldplay's new album, Viva la Vida, a listen. I'm not a huge Coldplay fan, but I thought that X&Y was a very solid album and a great collection of songs, so I went ahead and got a copy of the new album.

Overall, it's a pretty good album which gets better after repeated listening (their last album was exactly the same way). I think Coldplay writes great songs, but I have never really heard anything in the drumming that made me sit up and take notice. However, something caught my ear on my first listen and I knew then and there that I was going to need to figure it out.

It's on track four, a melancholy little tune called 42. About 1:35 into the song, Will Champion kicks in with a tasty little groove that, taken out of the context of the song, would actually work just as well as a funk groove. Here's a transcription:

As you can see, the phrase starts solid on the downbeat, but a couple sixteenth notes on the hi-hat offset the groove by an eighth note until it comes back together at the end. This displacement of the back beat has the effect of really driving this part of the song and creating a very funky feel to boot. In fact, this pattern reminds me a lot of some of the grooves laid down by Clyde Stubblefield on James Brown's tunes over the years, specifically I Got The Feelin' and Cold Sweat.

Here's a quick video of me playing this groove so you can get a feel for it (assuming you haven't or have no intention of buying the album):

*Note: If you see an image above for Microsoft Silverlight instead of a video player, please click on the link and download Silverlight. It's perfectly safe and will allow you to watch my video.

Try it out. There's a lot of fundamentals here for building great funk grooves.