Cmin Funk/Soul Groove #2: Building The Red Clay Grooveby Funk & Soul Grooves

In this lesson, we are going to use the rhythmic groove we learned in the previous funk lesson and apply it to new harmonic progressions. We're going to derive our harmony from the solo section of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's jazz standard, "Red Clay," from the 1970 CTI album of the same name. In "Red Clay," soloists blow over a four bar repeating vamp. We’re going to take that vamp and explode it into a variety of harmonic possibilities. The original chord progression will be our target iteration at the end of the lesson, but first we’re going to vary by reduction, removing select chords at different times to get at the essence of the harmony. We'll end up with a series of 18 4-bar patterns that gradually take us to our destination.