Billy Ashbaugh: Ghost Note Groove #1

This is a little funk groove inspired years ago by Rod Morgenstein. I've incorporated a 5 stroke roll along with opening the hi-hat to help spice it up a bit.....enjoy!!

Hello Billy Ashbaugh here with DrummerConnection.com and we're here in the Drum Room again. We just shot a lesson about dynamics and sort of getting use to rimshots and ghost notes, hi-hat, the tip of the stick, the bell of the ride, all these things. So I thought hey let me hit you guys with sort of a funk ghost note groove that Rod Morgenstein sort of exposed me to years ago on his 1st video...VHS at the time.
At that time in my playing it really helped me out a lot. I did sort of a version of that I want to share with you.

What he did that sort of inspired me was that he took straight 8th notes on the hi-hat with the right hand and did “e”'s and “a”'s filled in lightly, tapped as ghost notes with the left hand, keeping his hands there, and then came down for 2 & 4 on the snare. I'll give you a sample of what that sounds like.
Rod's Groove Demo

Alright, pretty cool sounding groove right. That really inspired me. So what I did was I started out first of all taking out the right hand moving down, leaving the right hand here and left hand on the snare drum still as ghost notes....creating just sort of a steady flow and that sounds like this.
Steady 16th Note Flow Demo

Alright there's our foundation keeping the right hand up here on the hi-hat, nice ghost notes down here. The next thing I want to work on....skip the first half let's look at the second half. Beat 4 OK. What we're going to do on the hi-hat to enable us to break up the snare and hit beat 4 with the left hand is open the hi-hat on the “&” of 3. So that sort of frees that “a” of 3 we were playing and allows us to come up and actually hit the back beat on 4. Then we're going to pick up the hi-hat pattern again on the “&” of 4 to keep it flowing. Sounds crazy but it's not that hard, check it out.
Demo

OK the final equation of this little thing. I like to take and do a little off beat snare, leave beat 2 alone. I figured what the heck, the left hand's down here already ghosting doing “e”'s and “a”'s so I decided to catch the “a” of 1 to throw it off and give it kind of a funky groove. So the hands alone sound like this.
Demo

Alright you've got the hands flowing sounding kinda cool, let's add the kick drum. You can always start with just 1 and 3. I like to hit 1, the “&” of 2 and then the down beat of 3. It sort of off sets nice between the snare patterns. I'll let you hear what that sounds like.
Demo

Alright one more idea to throw at you to sort of take this to another level. We've talked about the 5 stroke roll. I like to take and sneak the 5 stroke roll in right on 1, right on the down beat starting with the right. If that happens that means that the final hit of the 5 stroke roll, which is the “&” of 1, is going to wind up on the hi-hat. Sneaking in there right before the “a” of 1 sounds really cool. I also like to take that last note of the 5 stroke roll, ending with the right hand, and give it a little accent. It sets up the snare really nice....check this out.
Demo

OK, there it is, your first little funk groove you can mess with. Thank you Rod Morgenstein for the inspiration. Remember guys you've got to be patient with this. Break it down one section at a time. Get the hands comfortable then work on bringing in the foot. Relax, slow it down, concentrate on groove and making it feel good and you can't go wrong......so enjoy this one and check back in.